CNN Breaking: Lettuce likely culprit of E-Coli Outbreak says CDC

Lettuce is the likely culprit for an E. coli outbreak linked to Taco Bell, a CDC epidemiologist says.

No Story yet - on breaking headlines on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, etc.

http://www.cnn.com/

On edit story from CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/12/health/main2249717.shtml

Federal health officials on Wednesday said lettuce was the most likely source of an outbreak of E. coli linked to Taco Bell.

Taco Bell had said contaminated green onions were responsible for the cases of food poisoning at the chain's restaurants in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Follow-up government testing, however, failed to confirm that.

Health officials said interviews with patients — 67 people have been sickened — and other work led them to believe that lettuce was the probable culprit.

"That I would say is the most likely vehicle. I would warn we are not done with the investigation," Dr. Christopher Braden, a medical epidemiologist with the CDC, told reporters.

Investigators had considered cheddar cheese and ground beef as well.

It's amazing how many ways that company has come up with to present the same six or seven ingredients.

Ask me about "cheese identity" and "shred integrity".

...one of the few items without lettuce (although it would've had green onions under normal circumstances): Nachos BellGrande!

Also...consider yourself asked about "cheese identity" and "shred integrity." I can't resist.

I have a friend in Hollywood who does motion control camera work, e.g. movie camera flying over a perfect specimen of Nachos BellGrande for a new Taco Bell TV ad.

The people who set up the idealized specimens are very entertaining. Their metalanguage includes the terms Cheese Identity and Shred Integrity; a deficiency in either (or several other custom parameters) being sufficient to reject the prop and require a rebuild.

Each specimen is carefully hand assembled. Because an ad typically requires multiple takes for each shot, several may be made during the course of a shoot. The one that ends up in the final ad is referred to as the Hero (I think that's standard Hollywoodspeak).

In addition to the Cheese Identity/Shred Integrity experts, the Taco Bell team always includes a corporate lawyer, whose function is to ensure that the ad does not in any way give a misleading representation of what actual product a customer in a franchise restaurant might receive when he or she orders the item.

HTH.