Myth:
Organic Pastures and the Weston A. Price Foundation continue to repeat that the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 Raw Milk Product Outbreak was caused by Spinach.
Fact:
– 2006 Organic Pastures outbreak, illness onsets ranged from 9/6 to 9/24
– 5 patients had definite exposure to raw milk or raw milk products produced by Organic Pastures; the 6th patient denied drinking Organic Pastures milk but his family routinely consumed OP raw milk.
- 2 raw whole milk
- 2 raw skim milk
- 1 raw colostrum
– 5 patients with culture confirmation were PFGE matches to each other. Final report describes the PFGE patterns as “new to the PulseNet database” and they “differed markedly from the patterns of the concurrent E. coli O157:H7 outbreak strain associated with spinach consumption.”
– 4 patients reported consuming leafy salad greens of any kind
– 4 patients reported consuming lettuce
– 1 patient consumed bagged spinach on two occasions at restaurants
– 1 patient consumed bunched spinach (not bagged Dole)
– 2 patients consumed alfalfa sprouts
– 1 patient consumed ground beef
– No common restaurants
– No other common exposures
Reference: