According to CNN, nine people have gotten sick in Washington, Oregon and Idaho from E. coli contaminated beef. Federal and state health officials issued a consumer alert Thursday after nine people were sickened by contaminated beef produced by Interstate Beef of Oregon. The recall is for 41,205 pounds (approximately 20 tons) of beef.  As of a few hours ago, we have been contacted by two families who have been sickened in this latest failure of of our food safety system.  Also read the article in this mornings Oregonian.

The meat, processed between July 19 and July 30, according to the company, was also sold in Alaska, but no illnesses have been reported there. Authorities identified the suspect products as 16-ounce packages of “Northwest Finest 7% Fat, Natural Ground Beef” with UPC code label “752907 600127” and 16-ounce packages of “Northwest Finest 10% Fat, Organic Ground Beef” with expiration dates between August 1 to August 8. The beef was sold in Safeway, QFC, and Fred Meyer and other stores. DNA tests confirmed that the nine people sickened by E. coli were infected with the same strain of the bacteria.

I am sitting in the Sydney, Australia airport waiting on our flight back to the United States.  I thought it would be good however to stop in on Hawaii to see how the E. coli outbreak tied to lettuce is coming along.