we have the best mass food distribution system in the world. count the millions of meals eaten every day and how many people get sick and it is almost zero per cent. look at the side effects of any drug you take or how many people have to die before cars are recalled. If you are concerned about your food just raise your own or wash what you buy and you will still be exposed. every time a bird flies over your garden you are exposed.

Bon, I like some of the Dole prepackaged salads and eat them regularly. Sunflower Crunch is my favorite. The ones I buy in Texas are not on the list of recalled bag codes either, but I may stop buying them for a while, given that your friends' code numbers weren't on the recall list either. It wouldn't hurt for your friends or their doctor to report their illness to the CDC. It could be that the scope of the Dole contamination problem is larger than the CDC or Dole currently realizes (or acknowledges).

Listeria and salmonella seem to pop up on all sorts of purchased produce in recent years, and it is frustrating. I just planted lettuce and other greens recently so we can be back to eating our own home-grown stuff in a few weeks. We also are growing sprouts and microgreens.

Considering how much food goes through the commercial agriculture and grocery system in this country, the incidence of contamination is very low overall, but it still is frustrating to feel like you cannot trust the food you buy to be safe.

I hate that your friends became so ill and hope they all make a full recovery. Stomach infections like that sometimes can linger, and taking probiotics can aid in a person's recovery. I take a probiotic daily.

Thanks for sharing your friends' experience with us. It makes us more aware so that if any of us experience a similar illness after eating a packaged Dole salad product, we might be more inclined to report it to the CDC. Remember when the Blue Bell Ice Cream salmonella thing was just an isolated incident in KS and OK until, suddenly, it was a much bigger issue? Every big food contamination problem usually starts as a small problem (or, at least we are only aware of it as a small problem in a limited area) and we don't realize it is a big problem until the CDC is receiving lots of reports of the same type issues linked to the same types of foods. Our reporting system only works if everyone uses it!

Dawn

This is a little OT but I'm sharing b/c you have to wonder what "pre washed" really means. I was at a farmers market where there was a sign that read "prewashed, organic veggies". I mosey to that area and here is this guy in front of a huge shallow sink of water dunking spinach. I watched him dunk spinach 3 times, trouble is, he didn't change water for 2nd or 3rd rinsing OMG. I rinse those packaged salads most of time and fiercely pray to God that nothing goes wrong on the few occasions I get lazy or hurried and don't rinse.

I had this whole post typed out then hit a button and lost it all...in a nutshell it said, I am sorry to hear about your friends. I won't be buying dole anytime soon. I am on an eat local kick now...just need to figure out how to do it.....

Bon I hate to hear that about your friends and I hope they reported it. I too am on kick to eat my own food.

Please wash, soak in vinegar water and rinse well all vegetables including prewashed, large melons and your own.

And just think....if he was doing that sort of a poor job washing the spinach in public, how much of a poorer job does he do in private? I try to always wash everything...and with clean water too. Otherwise, what's the point? To me, if something is triple-washed in the same water, that is not triple washing at all.

I think if we had really great and accurate statistics on food-borne illnesses, we'd be appalled at how often they occur.

I have a friend with an immune disorder that is still suffering many weeks after getting bad food in a Joplin restaurant. She became very ill within 30 minutes of the meal.

I get messages on food recalls and there are many of them.

soonergrandmom - how do you get messages? email? app?

Thanks everyone. Everyone is recovering well.

Listeria is another one of those commonly present in the environment. Mostly, the amount is so small it can only make someone with a compromised immune system slightly ill and probably briefly.

Refrigeration doesn't kill it. Long-term refrigeration gives it time to grow, incubate and balloon into toxic levels that easily spill out onto surfaces and cross-contaminate.

Lettuce from garden to sink to table is really pretty safe even when contamination is present. The levels are very low.

Lettuce from garden to sink to refrigerator until the next serving is more risky. Contamination can grow to levels that will make everyone very sick.

Lettuce from farm to refrigerated containers, to refrigerated trucks, to other refrigerated trucks to refrigerated retail display and with new packaging - particularly the prepackaged lettuces - that prolong the shelf life is sufficient for gd knows what. This part is no one's fault. The CDC recommends avoiding pre-packaged salads for this reason.

The only solution is to sanitize everything that was directly and indirectly in contact. Once contamination is confirmed, it can be just about anywhere and all over that system.

Kinda puts a new perspective on the importance of routine sanitation of the home refrigerator! When was the last time I spilled something in the frig? Ensuring each individual container is closed tightly helps reduce the spread of contamination.

Goodness!

Okay, for some reason, I haven't been able to submit messages for two days. I went "incognito" in Chromium, and now I can. Anyway, this is what I wrote yesterday:

It would be much safer if people washed their store bought salad
greens. Just dump them in a colander and run a jet of water over
them. If you really want to go the extra mile, then rinse and soak in
an iodine solution. We used to purchase the iodine drops when we
lived in Mexico.

We
used to live in an area of Mexico which produced quite a few
vegetables. I can't remember how many times I came around the bend of
a dirt road and found farm workers washing vegetables in the canal.
The canal contained grey water from Mexico City and had many
pathogens in it, not to mention discarded agricultural chemicals.

Diseases
like this are also why my family and I avoid raw milk, even what we
produce on our own place. We've had personal, up close experience
some of these diseases. When our son went through veterinary school
he became even more adamantly opposed to the consumption of raw milk,
telling me that there are at least five milk born illnesses which are
incurable, once contracted.

So
now we live in the USA. But we try to take precautions, just as if we
lived in a less secure environment.

George

ezzirah

caroldumasallen at sbcglobal.net

I saw a recall alert on the news tonight for prepackaged Dole lettuce. To bad it was after your friends got sick.

Sadly, our commercial food system is only as strong as its weakest link, and based on the number of food-borne illnesses reported each year, I think there's lots of weak links.

Yesterday I read the article I've linked below. It is the six foods that a food safety lawyer won't touch. Some of the items surprised me, but what was most surprising is that he won't eat any pre-washed or pre-cut foods or veggies. Hmmm. When I'm in a hurry I like pre-cut stuff, but now I'm wondering if I should give up that little time-saver. I do still wash even the pre-washed stuff. And, yes, having thought about it for a few hours now, I probably will stop buying pre-cut stuff when I'm in a hurry and just spend more time standing in the kitchen chopping stuff up.

The 6 Food Items a Food Safety Expert Won't Eat

Our food distribution system is amazingly good.

That was a good read dawn. I look forward to day when I don't have to depend on the grocery store for any vegetables

I've taken away from this experience that it's important for me to not overburden myself with produce at harvest time and to not be complacent in processing. I need to pick what I can process within a reasonable time and be done with it as soon as possible.