Odwalla typically does not accept apples that have fallen to the ground, but the bacteria may have been transmitted secondhand by a picker, acknowledged company co-founder Greg Steltenpohl. The bacteria lives in the digestive systems of cattle and humans, and enters the food chain through fecal contamination.įor example, "a sick calf wanders into an area where apples are dropped on the ground," said Kenton Kidd, president of the California Apple Commission, the state's apple promotion arm. Williamson said he could not immediately provide the name or names of his firm's apple suppliers.
There is one major supplier who gets apples from a variety of sources." McDonald said she did not know the name of the supplier. McDonald said state and federal investigators are "looking at the Central Valley. FOCUS ON CENTRAL VALLEYįDA official McDonald said investigators "have taken a number of samples from the Odwalla plant and are now following up on distributors and growers of apples." Williamson said the FDA inspected his firm's plant July 1 and 2 and found nothing wrong with Odwalla's production methods. He said FDA and company officials are "tracing the lot back, but we haven't found anything yet. Speaking by phone from the firm's headquarters in Half Moon Bay, Williamson said he did not know how many juices were made that day nor how many were in Lot 2FO or where they went. The bottle of contaminated juice came from Lot 2FO, manufactured on October 6 and 7, said Odwalla Inc.'s chief executive officer, Stephen Williamson. Last week, Odwalla made a voluntary recall of 16 products - 13 of them apple or apple-based - and three that are not apple-based but shared the same production line at the company's Dinuba plant in Tulare County. "We will now begin testing an isolate from the apple juice to determine if it is the same strain of the bacteria that has caused recent E. "These results confirm our preliminary findings," said John Kobayashi, communicable disease epidemiologist for Washington's Department of Health. In Olympia, Wash., yesterday, FDA officials said they will send the contaminated juice sample to scientists at the University of Washington, the federal disease control center and to the Washington state health department laboratory for further testing. "She's watching Barney, the purple dinosaur, on TV, and we're taking her off the dialysis machine periodically to allow her to walk around." ORIGINAL FINDINGS CONFIRMED "She's continuing to show progress," Binkley-Smith said. In one of this outbreak's worst cases, the condition of 2-year-old Tara Azizi was upgraded from critical to serious at Children's Hospital Oakland, according to spokeswoman Monique Binkley-Smith. Further complications can include kidney damage, most frequently in children and elderly people. Bacterial infection can cause abdominal cramps and severe diarrhea. Nineteen of the cases have been found in Washington state, 10 in California, four in Colorado and six in British Columbia.įederal health officials said they have received no new reports of the illness in the past two days. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has linked 39 cases of the bacterial poisoning to Odwalla apple juice. coli bacteria in three western states and Canada was disclosed last week, some 65 cases have been reported to authorities. PAGE ONE - Death of Colorado Baby May Be Linked to Odwalla /.
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