Latest on Romaine E.coli Outbreak

November 21, 2018

Dear Valued Customer:

Yesterday, the Public Health Agency of Canada in collaboration with provincial public health partners, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Health Canada, as well as the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S. CDC), issued a Food Safety Alert describing its investigation into an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 linked to romaine lettuce. The Alert covers all romaine lettuce products, including whole head romaine, hearts of romaine, and bags and boxes of precut lettuce and salad mixes that contain romaine or baby romaine.

The Alert, published at http://www.cdc.gov and described at https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/public-health-notices/2018/outbreak-ecoli-infections-linked-romaine-lettuce.html, advises that customers should not eat any romaine lettuce, and retailers and restaurants should not serve or sell any, until the CFIA and CDC learn more about the outbreak.

At this time, none of Gambles’ grower/shippers have been contacted by either the CDC or the FDA regarding this matter. The only information we have regarding this matter is what is contained at the web links provided above. Presently, no common grower, supplier, distributor, production/harvesting area or brand has been identified, and we are not aware of any connection to our grower/shipper partners; Dole, D’Arrigo, Apio, and Duda.

Gambles will continue to follow our regular returns policy with respect to customer claims. We understand if the decision is made to discontinue romaine based products until further notice. We have elected to do the same and will not be loading any romaine based products moving forward.

Gambles is committed to providing safe, healthy and quality foods to our customers. As such, we have been and will continue to closely monitor this situation and will share any new information as it becomes available.

Sincerely,

Tom Kioussis
VP Sales & Marketing