"Then again, I've been eating a vegan diet for years now so I don't really keep up with meat product dangers.."

Good thing for you there's never been contamination of any vegetables like spinach...

It is not strictly a meat product danger.

http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/salad.asp

I'm not sure I'd be so smug.

http://edition.cnn.com/HEALTH/9611/01/e.coli.poisoning/

http://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/2006/september/

Sometimes I really wish Vegans would shut up when the news fundamentally don't matter to them. They are about as relevant as Atheists in a Catholic mess.