Posted by Doc Dave on Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 7:27AM :
In Reply to: Re: where does ecoli on the spinach come from posted by mikey stone Idaho (aka COTWM) on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 at 9:39PM :
The strain of E coli in question is often deadly (if it is the same one that infected hamburger a few years ago). Many "natural" substances are more deadly than man-made.
APB is right in that some of the workers don't care about cleanliness; there are many examples over the years of workers contaminating foodstuffs with their #2 if portajohns are not provided or if they are too lazy to walk a little distance to one. One of the more infamous related stories showed that workers had been crapping in cattle feed bins rather than walk to the end of the feedlot where the portajohn was. The cattle developed a parasitic worm as a result that people could catch.
BTW "#1" is normally sterile, so it rarely if ever is the problem.