The Friday warning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, issued a week before families sit down to dinner for Thanksgiving, comes exactly a year after another E. coli outbreak prompted the agency to issue an unusually broad alert to dump all romaine.
In its latest warning, the CDC urged consumers, retailers and restaurants to throw away any packages of romaine, including salad mixes, that have "Salinas" anywhere on the label. If the lettuce isn’t labeled with a growing region, it should also be thrown away.
The agency issued the announcement after investigating reports of 40 people in 16 states falling ill from E. coli contamination, including one person in Illinois, between Sept. 24 and Nov. 10. Twenty-eight of the people were hospitalized, and five developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a type of kidney failure. No one has died.
In interviews, the CDC found 80% of the ill people had eaten romaine, and preliminary evidence suggests some ate lettuce grown in Salinas, one of the country’s major growing regions. No common grower, supplier, distributor, or brand of romaine lettuce has been identified. The Food and Drug Administration and affected states are continuing efforts to trace back the contaminated lettuce.