The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment announced Wednesday that a test on a Denver resident showed that that person’s E. coli was not related to eating bagged spinach, and that the two Denver residents must have been infected in some other way.
Meanwhile, a Gunnison resident’s test did come back as spinach-related E. coli.
Two other Colorado cases – both from Boulder – remain, and those test results should be announced today or Friday, reports the Rocky Mountain News.
The bag of Dole baby spinach tested positive for the same strain of E. coli linked to the outbreak, said Dr. David Acheson of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. Dole is one of the brands of spinach recalled Friday by Natural Selection Foods LLC, of San Juan Bautista, California.
More than 100 people in 23 states have been sickened by E. coli, which probably got into the spinach in the fields of northern California by way of water, contaminated with cow manure being sprayed on the fields.
Sonja Tuitele, spokeswoman for Wild Oats markets, said the Boulder-based market will be looking for written assurance from the FDA that the only spinach suspected of being contaminated was grown in California. If everything goes well, she said, fresh spinach could be back in the vegetable bins by the weekend.