Washington - A rising toll of illness from spinach tainted with E.coli prompted United States officials on Monday to widen their search for the source of the bacteria that has killed one woman and made 109 ill in 19 states.
The Food and Drug Administration wants anything with fresh spinach off the menu.
"Until we get this thing narrowed down, that's the prudent thing to do," Robert Brackett, who oversees food safety for the FDA, told CNN.
"At this point our knowledge of specifically where this contamination is occurring is still unknown to us," Brackett told the cable news broadcaster.
He said that E. coli sickened seven more people since the last report of 102 on Saturday.
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The FDA earlier recommended that packaged fresh spinach should not be eaten, but has extended the warning to loose spinach as well, because some retailers open packages to display loose spinach.
Brackett also told CNN that 55 persons were admitted to hospital, 16 of them with some degree of kidney failure.
He said FDA did not have authority to ban the product, but has worked with retailers, many of whom have removed spinach from their shelves nationwide.
Escherichia coli O157:H7 bacteria causes diarrhoea, often with bloody stool. Although most healthy adults can recover completely within a week, some people's kidneys fail.
FDA told reporters that its investigators were trying to determine what caused the outbreak, and cited irrigation water contaminated by cattle feces as a likely cause.
The outbreak was confirmed only through epidemiological reports, and scientists have not actually caught up with the bug.
In the United States, an estimated 73 000 cases of E. coli infection, 61 of which end in death, occur each year, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. - Sapa-AFP
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