Summary

An E. coli outbreak linked to bagged organic carrots from Grimmway Farms has infected 39 people across 18 states, with 15 hospitalized and one death reported.

The recalled carrots, sold under brands like Trader Joe’s, Wegmans, and 365, are no longer in stores, but the CDC urges consumers to check for and discard any remaining stock.

E. coli infections, which cause severe stomach cramps, bloody diarrhea, and vomiting, can be life-threatening for vulnerable groups.

Recent outbreaks have also been tied to onions, lettuce, and walnuts.

    • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      As much as I agree with the sentiment, this strikes me as similar to when MAGAts would post pictures of empty store shelves during COVID and would say it’s what Biden’s America would look like. We all laughed because they were literally pictures of Trump’s America.

      I understand that Trump is going to gut federal agencies but…this is happening right now. Under Biden’s watch.

      • JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        And it’s still, for the moment, a screw-up. Something that slipped through the cracks. Deregulation means not even trying to stop it anymore, so it’ll be normal. Or, one layer of protection will be gone.

  • BigMacHole@lemm.ee
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    5 days ago

    LoL! I’m a Pro Life Republican and January can’t come SOON ENOUGH! Once Trump is in Office I won’t have to HEAR about ANY of this (even though it’ll be Happening MORE Frequently because of Lack of Regulations! I just won’t HEAR about it because it’ll be ILLEGAL to Mention!)!

    • bluewing@lemm.ee
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      4 days ago

      This has nothing to do with deregulation. If it did, they wouldn’t be removing contaminated carrots and you would never have heard of this.

      Those “non-existent regulations” are what forced the recall.

  • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Next time this happens under RFK’s tenure as secretary of HHS, there won’t be a recall. There wouldn’t even be a warning. They’ll just stay on shelves, hospitalizing and killing even more people.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Ugh, talk about a bad way to go. I once got food poisoning that needed a trip to the hospital, which is what ecoli is. I needed 2 units of water. Fortunately I’m not at risk so it cleared up fine with some antibiotics. But sitting yourself to death, while it sounds funny, is actually kinda awful.

    • enbyecho@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      “Well, they were organic alright. All natural shit fertilizer.”

      Doesn’t work that way. Even if the fields were fertilized with manure, they are done so long before planting - it’s literally in the National Organic Program regulations that certified organic farms are required to follow. It’s also just common practice anyway. Because duh, root vegetables.

      The main and pretty much only source of contamination is in the harvesting, processing, and handling. Not just people but equipment like conveyor belts. For example, “baby carrots” are almost never grown small but big carrots cut up by machines, which -no surprise- are easily contaminated.

  • ulterno@programming.dev
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    5 days ago

    So despite having heavy restrictions regarding taking foodstuffs on flights causing mass inconvenience, they don’t really do the simple work of sending random samples of packed stuff for lab testing? Meaning that buying stuff in a packet, while more expensive than buying from a street peddler in an unregulated country, is really not safer?
    Ok

    • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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      5 days ago

      See, government regulations are just red tape and inefficiency. It’s much better if you have to constantly risk death for the sake of more corporate profits.

      • ulterno@programming.dev
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        4 days ago

        And when it’s so easy to just bribe the red tapist, why not just let them have a few pennies and in turn get millions in extra profits.

  • rayyy@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Y’all know those migrants who pick your produce can’t afford to leave the big fields to use the bathroom so they let it fly in the fields - enjoy.

    • whyalone@lemm.ee
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      4 days ago

      Already blaming immigrants and shifting away from the real issue at hand. After Trump is installed, you will see more of these contaminations or not, because probably it will be forbidden to report them

    • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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      5 days ago

      Blame the corporations. They dump huge quantities of cow shit in the fields. Also blame the factory farms for producing the shit.

      • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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        4 days ago

        It’s not inherently a problem to utilize human waste for fertilizer, so long as it’s been processed correctly. They’ve been doing it for hundreds of years in East Asia by inoculating the waste with lactic acid bacteria.

        From the article you posted it seems the American way to “process” the waste is to just dry it out.

    • enbyecho@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      It’s not surprising to me that people are misinterpreting your comment, which is factual. If you are doing piece work on a large industrial farm and your nearest toilet is a 10 minute walk one way, you are very unlikely to take the time. This is only one vector but it’s an important one.

      On most smaller farms a great deal more care is exercised. On my farm we have a very strict hand-washing rule and have only ever paid by the hour. We also don’t have any processing equipment so the produce goes from the field to a carefully cleaned bin and straight to the farmer’s market or consumer directly. No conveyor belts, warehouse storage or re-packaging involved.

      • over_clox@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Motor oil is organic.

        How is there even such a thing as ‘organic’ carrots if there isn’t also ‘non-organic’ carrots?

        What the F is a non-organic fruit or vegetable?

        Please explain…

          • over_clox@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            No no, I asked you people. Where the hell are there non-organic plant foods? They’re all organic, by literal definition.

            Or did anyone forget, ‘organic’ fruits and vegetables are fertilized with manure rather than synthetic chemicals…

            • enkers@sh.itjust.works
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              5 days ago

              Where the hell are there non-organic plant foods?

              If you ask that in the supermarket, you’ll get a very different answer than in a chemistry classroom.

              Organic (marketing) and organic (chemistry) are different concepts, so the answer to your question would depend on the context in which it is being asked. 🤷‍♂️

              • over_clox@lemmy.world
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                5 days ago

                And organic food is fertilized with organic feces.

                Wonder where the E. Coli comes from? 🤔

                • enkers@sh.itjust.works
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                  5 days ago

                  I’m going to take a minute to respond to the argument I think you’re trying to imply here, that organic food leads to e-coli outbreaks in humans.

                  While there is some validity to this, it’s an oversimplification. The vast majority of e-coli is not problematic. The stuff that’s actually a threat comes from sick animals. So when you have AFOs with tons of animals in close proximity, the manure tends to be more likely to be contaminated. And when that contaminated manure gets used as fertiliser, it makes contaminated vegetables.

                  This doesn’t necessarily only affect organic vegetables, btw, as the runoff from AFOs can also be a contaminant, so it can affect neighbouring farms as well, organic or otherwise. This is how you can get e-coli contaminated lettuce because it was washed with contaminated water.

                  Personally, the reason I’d buy organic produce would be a) generally better quality produce and b) avoiding glyphosate and PFAS in pesticides. I think that Monsanto has played out billions in settlements related to roundup speaks volumes.

                  That said, I’m not nearly crunchy enough to think that artificial fertilisers are problematic. Heck, I use them in my own garden. Stuff that kills stuff tends to be more dangerous than stuff that makes stuff grow, but ofc dosage is everything.

                  All that is to say, I’d posit that the real problem here is intensified animal agriculture, and corner cutting (both in fertiliser production and sourcing), not organic farming per se.

              • over_clox@lemmy.world
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                5 days ago

                Yes, I’ve read some of the works of Mark Twain.

                I’ve also helped on farms before, they literally use shit as fertilizer.

      • over_clox@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        No shit? That’s exactly what I referred to in another comment in this thread, organic foods are fertilized with literal shit.

        Wonder why we get diseases in our organic foods?

        • catloaf@lemm.ee
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          5 days ago

          Same way we get diseases in the foods treated with chemical fertilizer. I’m not aware of any data on rates of disease from organic vs. non-organic, but if you have some, I’d love to see.

        • enbyecho@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          “organic foods are fertilized with literal shit.”

          Your post is utter nonsense for a variety of reasons, but mainly it’s your ignorance of how manure is used. Review the National Organic Program (USA) standards in §205.203©(1) for a primer on that. Europe’s regulations are even stricter.

          Reference: https://eorganic.org/node/3132