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Where do you suggest buying “safe” greens?
– Janet
Dear Janet,
There are a lot of us — more than 22,000 across 15 states — who’ve spent our summer not on a beach but on our toilets, thanks to an outbreak of cyclosporiasis from contaminated lettuce, which causes, among other symptoms, “explosive diarrhea.”
No sooner did we think it was safe to leave our bathrooms than we got news that jalapeños are the latest Trojan horse, this time carrying salmonella.
The contaminations have been traced to a company called Taylor Farms and specifically to farms in Mexico. But because Taylor Farms products are sold under some private labels — including in stores dotted around the country, such as Wal-Mart and Trader Joe’s — it’s reasonable to wonder how safe the produce is at your local grocer.
Though the lettuce recall seems to have been thorough and successful — “That product is off the market, so I think there’s absolutely lower risk for cyclospora in terms of eating lettuce,” Kali Kniel, a professor of microbial food safety at the University of Delaware, told Wired magazine — there remains the jalapeño contamination, along with potential contamination of parsley and cilantro in North Carolina.
What’s a greens-loving consumer to do? Dot tosses some ideas!
