A California natural foods company was linked Friday to a nationwide E. coli outbreak that has killed one person and sickened nearly 100 others.

    一家加利福尼亞的天然食品公司與周五美國全國范圍爆發的大腸桿菌有關。這次大爆發致使了1人死亡和將近100人生病。

    Supermarkets across the country pulled spinach from shelves and consumers tossed out the leafy green.

    全國的超市都已經將菠菜下架了，人們也扔掉了這種綠色蔬菜。

    Food and Drug Administration officials said that they had received reports of illness in 19 states.

    美國食品和藥物管理局官員表示他們已經接到了全國19個州上報的病例。

    The outbreak was traced to Natural Selection Foods, based in San Juan Bautista, California, and the company has voluntarily recalled products containing spinach.

    本次的大爆發可以追根到加州圣胡安包蒂斯塔的Natural Selection Foods公司，該公司已經開始自愿召回含有菠菜的產品。

    FDA officials stressed that the bacteria had not been isolated in products sold by Natural Selection Foods but that the link was established by patient accounts of what they had eaten before becoming ill.

    美國食品和藥物管理局官員強調Natural Selection Foods公司出售的產品還沒有查出含有細菌，但是患者稱他們是在食用了這些產品后才生病的，這使得該食品公司也本次大爆發扯上了關系。

    An investigation was continuing.

    關于此事的調查正在進行中。

    “It is possible that the recall and the information will extend beyond Natural Selection Foods and involve other brands and other companies at other dates,” said Dr. David Acheson, the chief medical officer with the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

    “召回令和其他的相關信息很可能超出Natural Selection Foods公司的范圍，會在不同的時間涉及到其他公司或其他品牌，”食品和藥物管理局食品安全和應用營養學中心的衛生總干事大衛·艾奇遜表示。

    Natural Selection Foods said in a statement that it was cooperating with federal and state health officials to identify the source of the contamination and had stopped shipping all fresh spinach products.

    Natural Selection Foods公司在一項聲明中說，他們正與聯邦及州衛生官員配合，查明污染源，同時已經停止運輸所有的新鮮菠菜產品。

    State health officials received the first reports of illness August 25, and the FDA was informed on Wednesday, Acheson said.

    艾奇遜表示，國家健康部門的官員在8月25日收到第一例報告，食品和藥物管理局（FDA）在周三接到這一通知。

    The FDA warned people nationwide not to eat spinach. Washing won't get rid of the bacteria, though thorough cooking can kill it.

    FDA警告讓全美的居民不要食用菠菜。雖然通過徹底的烹煮可以殺滅病菌，但沖洗去無法去除。

    “We're waiting for the all-clear,” said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventative medicine at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. The university's medical center was treating a 17-year-old Kentucky girl for E. coli infection. That case had been listed as originating in Tennessee, but federal health officials changed it to Kentucky.

    “我們都在等待解除警報，”田納西范德比爾特大學預防藥物中心主席威廉·夏弗納博士說。該中心接診了一位感染大腸桿菌的肯塔基州17歲女孩。這一病例原先被列為田納西發病的病例，但后來聯邦健康官員將其改為在肯塔基州引發的病例。

    Each year, consumers buy hundreds of millions of pounds of bagged spinach —— triple-washed and packaged in cellophane bags and clamshell boxes.

    每年人們要消費上千萬噸的袋裝菠菜，這些菠菜都經過了3遍清洗，包裝在膠袋和蛤狀的箱子里。

    Better safe than sorry

    更安全的食品而不是道歉

    “We will do whatever is necessary to help protect the health and safety of the public,” Earthbound Farm spokeswoman Samantha Cabaluna said in a statement.

    Earthbound農場女發言人薩曼塔·卡巴魯拉在一項聲明中說：“我們將會為保障公眾的健康和安全竭盡所能。”

    The company said consumers could call 800-690-3200 for a refund or replacement coupons for tossed-out spinach products.

    公司表示消費者可以打800-690-3200要求為扔掉的菠菜產品退款或者換取替代那些產品的優惠卷。

    Wisconsin accounted for 29 illnesses, about one-third of the cases, including the lone death.

    威斯康星州有29例患者，占了所有患者的1/3，還包括唯一的一例死亡病例。

    “We are telling everyone to get rid of fresh bagged spinach right now. Don't assume anything is over,” Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle said.

    威斯康星州長基姆·道爾說：“我們正告訴所有的人馬上把袋裝新鮮菠菜扔掉。千萬不要以為一切都結束了。”

    Other states reporting cases were： California, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    根據疾病防治和控制中心（CDC）的報告，其他報告病例的州還包括加利福尼亞、康涅狄格、愛達荷、印第安那、肯塔基、緬因、密切根、明尼蘇達、新墨西哥、內華達、紐約、俄亥俄、俄勒岡、賓夕法尼亞、尤他、維吉尼亞、華盛頓和懷俄明州。

    Tennessee had been mistakenly placed on an earlier list.

    田納西在早前的報告中被錯誤的列于名單之上。

    The bug has sickened at least 94 people across the nation, the CDC said. The agency added that 29 people have been hospitalized, 14 of them with kidney failure.

    CDC說，細菌在全美至少造成了94人染病。該機構還說有29人住院治療，其中14人腎衰竭。

    FDA officials said they issued the nationwide consumer alert without waiting to identify the source of the tainted spinach.

    FDA官員說他們在找出菠菜污染源前就發布了全民警報。

    “Early is good,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, adding that the alert may have prevented hundreds more cases.

    “早做是好的，”大眾營養健康科學中心食品安全主任卡羅琳·史密斯·德瓦爾接著表示，警告可以防治更多的病例出現。

    An industry spokeswoman said public health concerns justified the blanket warning.

    “It needed to happen this way,” said Kathy Means, a spokeswoman for the Produce Marketing Association. “Public health has to trump economics at this time.”

    一位工業女發言人表示公眾健康問題適用于地毯式的報警。“需要這樣做，”產品行銷協會女發言人凱西·明斯說。“現在，公眾健康是經濟中的王牌。”

    More than half the nation's annual 500 million-pound spinach crop is grown in California's Monterey County, according to the Agriculture Department.

    農業部表示，全國每年5億噸菠菜產量由超過一半是在加利福尼亞蒙特瑞縣種植的。

    “We're trying to get to the bottom of this and figure out what happened. Everybody is terribly concerned,” said Dave Kranz, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

    “我們將徹底調查此事，找出問題的根源。人們對此非常關心，”加利福尼亞農業聯盟署發言人大衛·克蘭茨說。

    Even before the latest outbreak, a joint state and federal effort has been under way in the California county to find and eliminate any possible sources of E. coli contamination.

    就在最近一次爆發前，國家和州政府正在加利福尼亞縣展開聯合行動找出并徹底消除大腸桿菌污染源。

    “We need to strive to do even better so even one life is not lost,” said Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, FDA's acting commissioner.

    FDA代理專員安德森·范·艾申巴赫表示：“我們需要更加努力做得更好，以保證不讓一個人為此而犧牲。”

    Washing won't help

    水洗沒有幫助

    The FDA's top food expert stressed the importance of stopping the bacterium at its source, since rinsing spinach won't eliminate the risk. “If you wash it, it is not going to get rid of it,” said Robert Brackett, director of the agency's Center for Food Safety and Nutrition.

    FDA的高級食品專家強調要從源頭上消除細菌的重要性，因為清水沖洗并不能消除菠菜細菌帶來的危險。“如果是沖洗，不可能消除細菌，”食品安全和營養中心主任羅伯特·布蘭科特說。

    E. coli lives in the intestines of cattle and other animals and typically is spread through contamination by fecal material. Brackett said the use of manure as a fertilizer for produce typically consumed raw, such as spinach, is not in keeping with good agricultural practices.

    大腸桿菌存活在牛或其他動物的大腸中，主要通過排泄物傳播細菌。布蘭科特說，用糞便作為主要用于生吃的農產品的肥料，像菠菜，并不是好的農業種植行為。

    “It is something we don't want to see,” he told a food policy conference.

    他在一個農業政策會議上表示：“那是我們不想看到的。”

    Meanwhile, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Safeway Inc., SuperValu Inc. and other major grocery chains stopped selling spinach, removing it from shelves and salad bars.

    同時，沃爾瑪、Safeway、SuperValu以及其他一些主要的食品連鎖店也將菠菜下架，停止銷售。

    “We pulled everything that we have spinach in,” said Dan Brettelle, manager of a Piggly Wiggly store in Columbia, South Carolina.

    “我們把所有含有菠菜的東西下架了，”南卡羅琳州哥倫比亞的一家Piggly Wiggly經理丹·布雷托利表示。

    Consumer activist Barb Kowalcyk said fixing the nation's “fractured network” of food safety agencies could save lives. In 2001, her 2-year-old son, Kevin, died of E. coli, possibly after eating tainted ground beef.

    維護消費者利益的積極支持者巴布·科瓦塞克說，修理國家“斷裂”的食品安全系統可以拯救人們的性命。她的2歲的孩子愷文在2001年因食用了感染了大腸桿菌的絞牛肉去世。

    “How can we improve communication between agencies？ That needs to happen,” the Loveland, Ohio, resident said.

    “我們如何提高各個機構之間的溝通能力？這需要去做，”俄亥俄州拉弗蘭德的居民說。

    Not all strains of E. coli cause illness： E. coli O157：H7, the strain involved in the current outbreak, was first recognized as a cause of illness in 1982. That strain causes an estimated 73,000 cases of infection, including 61 deaths, each year in the United States, according to the CDC.

    并不是所有的大腸桿菌都回到之疾病。與本次爆發有關的大腸桿菌O 157在1982年首次發現致病。根據CDC的報告，每年美國估計有73，000例這種細菌感染，其中導致61例死亡。

    When ingested, the bug can cause diarrhea, often with bloody stools. Most healthy adults can recover completely within a week, although some people —— including the very young and old —— can develop a form of kidney failure that often leads to death.

    這種細菌進入人體后可以導致痢疾，經常還有血便。盡管有些人，特別是老人或小孩，可能會導致大多數情況下會致人死亡的腎衰竭，但大多數健康的成年人可以在一周內恢復健康。

    Sources of the bacterium include uncooked produce, raw milk, unpasteurized juice, contaminated water and meat, especially undercooked or raw hamburger.

    細菌的來源包括沒有煮熟的農作物、生牛奶、未經高溫消毒的果汁、受污染的水源或肉，特別是煮得不熟或者是生的漢堡。