It’s OK to eat romaine lettuce again, the Food and Drug Administration said late Monday, lifting a nationwide ban on its sale and consumption but leaving it in place for a growing region in California.
Officials had told consumers to throw out any romaine ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, citing an E.coli outbreak that sickened dozens in the U.S. and Canada.
The FDA said it used the “clean break” to trace the outbreak back to end-of-season lettuce grown in the Central Coast growing region of central and northern California.
Agency officials say consumers should check revamped labels that will now say where and when their romaine was grown.
If it’s from the winter-growing regions of the U.S. — the California desert region of the Imperial Valley, the desert region of Arizona in and around Yuma and Florida — it’s fine, since people started getting sick before these regions started shipping out their product.
“Hydroponically- and greenhouse-grown romaine also does not appear to be related to the current outbreak,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said. “There is no recommendation for consumers or retailers to avoid using romaine harvested from these sources.”
“If consumers, retailers, and food service facilities are unable to identify that romaine lettuce products are not affected — which means determining that the products were grown outside the California regions that appear to be implicated in the current outbreak investigation —we urge that these products not be purchased, or if purchased, be discarded or returned to the place of purchase,” he said.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.