The largest outbreak of E. coli in more than a decade is over, federal authorities said Thursday, after five people died and more than 200 others were sickened in three dozen states.
Although investigators determined that the E. coli came from contaminated romaine lettuce grown in Arizona’s Yuma region near the border with Southern California, the Food and Drug Administration has not been able to link the outbreak to one farm, processor or distributor. New evidence showed bacteria taken from several canal water samples in the Yuma growing region to be a genetic match to the strain of bacteria that caused the outbreak, according to a statement from FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb on Thursday.
