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

一家加利福尼亚的天然食品公司与周五美国全国范围爆发的大肠杆菌有关。这次大爆发致使了1人死亡和将近100人生病。

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

全国的超市都已经将菠菜下架了，人们也扔掉了这种绿色蔬菜。

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

美国食品和药物管理局官员表示他们已经接到了全国19个州上报的病例。

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

本次的大爆发可以追根到加州圣胡安包蒂斯塔的Natural Selection Foods公司，该公司已经开始自愿召回含有菠菜的产品。

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.

美国食品和药物管理局官员强调Natural Selection Foods公司出售的产品还没有查出含有细菌，但是患者称他们是在食用了这些产品后才生病的，这使得该食品公司也本次大爆发扯上了关系。

An investigation was continuing.

关于此事的调查正在进行中。

“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.

“召回令和其他的相关信息很可能超出Natural Selection Foods公司的范围，会在不同的时间涉及到其他公司或其他品牌，”食品和药物管理局食品安全和应用营养学中心的卫生总干事大卫·艾奇逊表示。

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公司在一项声明中说，他们正与联邦及州卫生官员配合，查明污染源，同时已经停止运输所有的新鲜菠菜产品。

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

艾奇逊表示，国家健康部门的官员在8月25日收到第一例报告，食品和药物管理局（FDA）在周三接到这一通知。

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

FDA警告让全美的居民不要食用菠菜。虽然通过彻底的烹煮可以杀灭病菌，但冲洗去无法去除。

“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.

“我们都在等待解除警报，”田纳西范德比尔特大学预防药物中心主席威廉·夏弗纳博士说。该中心接诊了一位感染大肠杆菌的肯塔基州17岁女孩。这一病例原先被列为田纳西发病的病例，但后来联邦健康官员将其改为在肯塔基州引发的病例。

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

每年人们要消费上千万吨的袋装菠菜，这些菠菜都经过了3遍清洗，包装在胶袋和蛤状的箱子里。

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农场女发言人萨曼塔·卡巴鲁拉在一项声明中说：“我们将会为保障公众的健康和安全竭尽所能。”

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

公司表示消费者可以打800-690-3200要求为扔掉的菠菜产品退款或者换取替代那些产品的优惠卷。

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，还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.

威斯康星州长基姆·道尔说：“我们正告诉所有的人马上把袋装新鲜菠菜扔掉。千万不要以为一切都结束了。”

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.

根据疾病防治和控制中心（CDC）的报告，其他报告病例的州还包括加利福尼亚、康涅狄格、爱达荷、印第安那、肯塔基、缅因、密切根、明尼苏达、新墨西哥、内华达、纽约、俄亥俄、俄勒冈、宾夕法尼亚、尤他、维吉尼亚、华盛顿和怀俄明州。

Tennessee had been mistakenly placed on an earlier list.

田纳西在早前的报告中被错误的列于名单之上。

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说，细菌在全美至少造成了94人染病。该机构还说有29人住院治疗，其中14人肾衰竭。

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

FDA官员说他们在找出菠菜污染源前就发布了全民警报。

“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，”大众营养健康科学中心食品安全主任卡罗琳·史密斯·德瓦尔接着表示，警告可以防治更多的病例出现。

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.”

一位工业女发言人表示公众健康问题适用于地毯式的报警。“需要这样做，”产品行销协会女发言人凯西·明斯说。“现在，公众健康是经济中的王牌。”

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

农业部表示，全国每年5亿吨菠菜产量由超过一半是在加利福尼亚蒙特瑞县种植的。

“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.

“我们将彻底调查此事，找出问题的根源。人们对此非常关心，”加利福尼亚农业联盟署发言人大卫·克兰茨说。

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.

就在最近一次爆发前，国家和州政府正在加利福尼亚县展开联合行动找出并彻底消除大肠杆菌污染源。

“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代理专员安德森·范·艾申巴赫表示：“我们需要更加努力做得更好，以保证不让一个人为此而牺牲。”

Washing won't help

水洗没有帮助

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的高级食品专家强调要从源头上消除细菌的重要性，因为清水冲洗并不能消除菠菜细菌带来的危险。“如果是冲洗，不可能消除细菌，”食品安全和营养中心主任罗伯特·布兰科特说。

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.

大肠杆菌存活在牛或其他动物的大肠中，主要通过排泄物传播细菌。布兰科特说，用粪便作为主要用于生吃的农产品的肥料，像菠菜，并不是好的农业种植行为。

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

他在一个农业政策会议上表示：“那是我们不想看到的。”

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

同时，沃尔玛、Safeway、SuperValu以及其他一些主要的食品连锁店也将菠菜下架，停止销售。

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

“我们把所有含有菠菜的东西下架了，”南卡罗琳州哥伦比亚的一家Piggly Wiggly经理丹·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.

维护消费者利益的积极支持者巴布·科瓦塞克说，修理国家“断裂”的食品安全系统可以拯救人们的性命。她的2岁的孩子恺文在2001年因食用了感染了大肠杆菌的绞牛肉去世。

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

“我们如何提高各个机构之间的沟通能力？这需要去做，”俄亥俄州拉弗兰德的居民说。

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.

并不是所有的大肠杆菌都回到之疾病。与本次爆发有关的大肠杆菌O 157在1982年首次发现致病。根据CDC的报告，每年美国估计有73，000例这种细菌感染，其中导致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.

这种细菌进入人体后可以导致痢疾，经常还有血便。尽管有些人，特别是老人或小孩，可能会导致大多数情况下会致人死亡的肾衰竭，但大多数健康的成年人可以在一周内恢复健康。

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

细菌的来源包括没有煮熟的农作物、生牛奶、未经高温消毒的果汁、受污染的水源或肉，特别是煮得不熟或者是生的汉堡。