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Comment by wahern | Hacker News Reader

> I haven't bought bagged lettuce in months in response to this outbreak.

1) Why? The source was quickly identified, and it's trivial to avoid the tainted supplier.

2) Why only now? Bagged leafy greens are notorious for outbreaks. The extra processing steps means greater opportunity for introducing contamination (more people handling the produce), and greater opportunity for cross-contamination.

This food safety expert/activist/litigator has explained both of those points many times: https://www.marlerblog.com/ Though, being middle-aged and perhaps with better-than-average recollection, I connected the dots to bagged leafy greens years ago, across many news cycles, and to the risk of food poisoning from vegetables generally, through hard, personal experience.

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> it's trivial to avoid the tainted supplier

It really, really is not. They are massive and are a supplier for a huge number of restaurants.

> The source was quickly identified, and it's trivial to avoid the tainted supplier.

The mixed messaging certainly didn’t help.

One day it’s Taylor Farms and the next the FDA was apologizing.

And even once it was found to be Taylor Farms, you can’t control every Taco Bell or anything else.

Mostly it just killed any consumer confidence in greens

> you can’t control every Taco Bell

Restaurants and fast-food outlets generally can't/don't avoid their staff making sketchy health decisions.

Don't eat at them if you're worried.

Read anything about back-kitchens and staff's interesting attitudes towards health risks.

I highly recommend Kitchen Confidential - amazing novel writing.

Although my intro to the genre was 1933's Down and Out in Paris and London (an upper-middle class хорошо horrorshow). An all-time favorite book.

>Why only now?

Exactly. I never saw a reason to even get started.

If you go back not that many decades, consumers had never bought tightly-bagged vegetables because they were not available.

If you were accustomed to never having bagged lettuce growing up it mainly just seems like false convenience to begin with.

>Bagged leafy greens are notorious for outbreaks.

Naturally without data this was not well-established nor completely confirmed like it is now.

Everybody and their grandmother had just instinctively known better for centuries.

When homemakers did cut or shred lettuce it was usually intended to be eaten within the hour. Nobody would do this very far in advance at home, and only after discarding the outer leaves, then thoroughly washing the remaining part that was going to be carefully "processed" by hand, then eaten by their loving family. With clean hands after washing with soap.

Back when government regulators were actually recognized having stronger interest in food safety than today, you still couldn't expect their standards to be the very highest.

It was just better than nothing.

That same hard personal experience goes way back before the advent pf plastics.

News and recency bias tend to cause people to make wrong (or non-optimal) choices.

And in any case, a preventative measure, like thoroughly washing the lettuce is a good form of insurance for home made foods, regardless of what's reported on the news.

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