I was talking with William Newman from the New York Times as he was writing his story on “Tainted Lettuce Linked to Illness in Three States,” when he asked about prior E. coli O145 outbreaks. I was able to pull out of my hat:

“William Marler, a lawyer specializing in such cases, said that while there were no previous foodborne outbreaks associated with the O145 strain in this country, one was reported in Belgium in 2007 in which 12 people fell ill.”

Good that I had access to www.outbreakdatabase.com.