Hey, when you think of a Florida Walmart, what are you imagining? (Actually, please don’t share whatever that is, because it’s probably not good.)
Whatever you did imagine, though, is probably not as bad as what some customers found in their lettuce, via the Miami Herald:
Fresh Express recalled its Organic Marketside Spring Mix from Walmart stores in the Southeastern United States Saturday because a dead bat was found in a packaged salad in Florida.
That’s less than ideal! Once you get over the visceral reaction to a dead bat in lettuce, you might wonder whether or not there’s a chance of rabies contamination.
As the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s recall chart notes, if there’s the possibility of bat body parts, there’s a “minimal risk of rabies contamination.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it’s working with the FDA and the Florida Department of Health to investigate the situation.
Minimal risk is better than a lot of risk, but obviously not as good as no risk, especially because (get ready for another visceral reaction!) the people unfortunate enough to end up with the bat salad were also unfortunate enough to not notice it before consuming some of the salad mix, as noted by the CDC:
“Two people in Florida reported eating some of the salad before the bat was found. The bat was sent to the CDC rabies lab for laboratory testing because bats in the United States sometimes have been found to have this disease. The deteriorated condition of the bat did not allow for CDC to definitively rule out whether this bat had rabies.”
The CDC did say the risk of rabies transmission is very low, but not zero, so the organization recommended the two eaters of the organic salad begin treatment as if they’d been exposed to rabies. Both report good health so far, according to the CDC.
Gross gross gross. Let this be a lesson to everyone: never eat vegetables. I just eat meat, so I’m at least aware I’m ingesting former animals of some kind. Much better that way.
