Something in the Mix

Fox 9 investigators are sharing the story of how Lori Olson’s daughter Amber, as well as 25 other Minneapolis residents, contracted E.coli from bagged lettuce last fall.
Amber spent 34 days in the hospital while the bacteria filled her body with toxins and caused her kidneys to fail. She needed dialysis to stay alive. The E.coli left her with permanent kidney damage, and she may one day need a transplant.
The Minnesota outbreak led to a nationwide recall of nearly a quarter million bags of lettuce from Dole Foods. The company still doesn’t know how its product got contaminated, or why the majority of people who got sick were in Minnesota.
The Food and Drug Administration blames 18 E. coli outbreaks since 1995 on contaminated lettuce. Nearly half of the outbreaks, including the most recent one in Minnesota, were traced back to lettuce grown in the Salinas valley of California.