09/18/06 E. Coli & White Buffalo

E. Coli outbreak & rare white buffalo. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Federal health officials worked Friday to find the source of a multistate E. coli outbreak and warned consumers that even washing the suspect spinach won`t kill the sometimes-deadly bacteria. One person died and dozens of others were sickened in the 10-state outbreak, linked by Food and Drug Administration officials to bagged spinach. The FDA warned people not to eat bagged spinach and said washing it wouldn`t solve the problem because the bacteria are too tightly attached. Robert Brackett, director of the FDA`s Center for Food Safety and Nutrition said even if you wash it, it is not going to get rid of it. The original outbreak was reported Thursday in eight states. On Friday, Ohio and Kentucky brought the tally to 10, as additional reports trickled in to state and federal health officials. Ohio health officials reported seven cases  one serious  while Kentucky officials knew of a single case involving a 17-year-old girl being treated in neighboring Tennessee. Meanwhile, supermarkets around the country began pulling packaged spinach from store shelves. Even some local sandwich shops removed spinach from their menus. The David Heider farm in Wisconsin is quickly becoming hallowed ground for American Indians with the birth of its third white buffalo, an animal considered sacred by many tribes for its potential to bring good fortune and peace. According to Heider thousands of people have stopped by his Janesville farm after the birth of the first white buffalo, a female named Miracle who died in 2004 at the age of 10. A second white buffalo was born in 1996 but died after three days. Over the weekend, about 50 American Indians held a drum ceremony to honor the calf, which has yet to be named. The white buffalo is particularly sacred to the Cheyenne, Sioux and other nomadic tribes of the Northern Plains that once relied on the buffalo for subsistence. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Susan Allen. In the near future being true to your universities colors might mean more than wearing a purple and gold sweatshirt to the foot ball game. Rather, the dawning of green reflects a new "green" pride that is occurring on college campus's throughout the nation and I am not talking U of O duck green! In the Northwest our universities are setting high standards of incorporating environmental measures to teach and practice sustainability. Some of the staff at U of W now tootle around in hybrid cars. At the University of Idaho students tend to a sustainable/organic garden that provides fresh cafeteria fare. The student body at Western Washington University is anteing up an additional $10.50 per student each quarter to purchase renewable energy making them the first to northwest campus to be green dependant. WSU now offers an organic farming degree. So while we expect school pride to surface on the football field, basketball court or in the case of Beavers, the baseball diamond, we shouldn't be surprised that colleges also will vie for the honor of being the greenest campus. Thanks Susan. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.