The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a warning recommending that consumers avoid eating raw alfalfa sprouts after they were linked with an outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul across six states.
So far 31 cases of illness in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah and West Virginia have been linked to the consumption of raw alfalfa sprouts either at restaurants or following a retail purchase.
The outbreak could be an extension of one from earlier in the year when infections occurred in Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas and Minnesota, which were again linked with eating the raw sprouts.
'FDA will work with the alfalfa sprout industry to help identify which seeds and alfalfa sprouts are not connected with this contamination, so that this advisory can be changed as quickly as possible,' the FDA said in a statement.
Initial reports from the FDA and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have suggested that, as the outbreak appears to have come from multiple growers in different states, the problem lies either in the seeds used or a lack of effective disinfection treatment methods used.
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