The delicious irony is that E. coli is really only super dangerous for people who are sick or who have weakened immune systems (and the elderly and young) and the name of the company with the "issues" is "Natural Selection Foods"

As a serious remark, I think the length of that list of companies that were/are supplied by Natural Selection Foods really highlights the problems with the food distribution system in the US. Many of those so-called "organic" brands are clearly just putting their own label on stuff from another giant supplier.

Not that surprising, but it's still pretty scary/revealing.

Marketers have learned that Organic means people will pay more for it. What's really evil is how big corporations "pretend" to be little guys with their brands to fool to consumer.

My question is, if it's in the spinach, what other produce may be affected by this outbreak?

The O-157 strain of E. coli can make even healthy individuals very sick and is not something to be taken lightly. It is time to consider irradiation of fresh vegetables. We not only have natural contamination issues to worry about, but also deliberate contamination of our food supply by those who wish to disrupt our way of life.

Wow, maybe we should irradiate everything possible. That way no one will have to care about the amount of E. coli or any other disease - it can all be "cleaned." And why limit it to fresh vegetables? Irradiate everything from any restaurant, so the employees don't even have to wash their hands after using the toilet. I mean, I'll eat potentially dangerous bacteria and fecal matter if it's irradiated, wouldn't you?
If you see the sarcasm, then you also see that irradiation is a crappy band-aid covering up a pussy, festering wound. I'd rather have the wound treated then have another band-aid.

The most likely scenario for the recent e coli scare is the attempt by multinational corporations to scare people away from eating healthier organic foods. Healthy people are a direct threat to the profits from processed foods that make up the SAD diet (Standard American Diet), as well as the drugs that people then take to overcome illnesses resulting from eating like that. You are far less likely to get sick from e coli than getting hit by lightning or falling down stairs. Certainly, even a handful of people getting sick is a tragedy. But the SAD diet is killing people every day!

Conventional food recalls significantly outweigh organic food recalls. One single incidence of ground beef contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7 in 2002 dwarfs all organic food safety recalls in history combined.

E coli is a natural bacteria in all mammals including people. The one dangerous form usually only comes from cows kept in large commercial feed lots, where they have to inject cows with tons of antibiotics just to keep them alive. Organic farms do not use manure from non-organic sources, especially feed lots. And even organic manure must be composted, and is never applied directly to plants.

Eating more raw organic foods is in fact the best way to secure your health. Most people are slowly starving on foods designed to build corporate profits, not your health. Organic foods, on the other hand, are 80% - 300% more nutritious on average than conventional produce. But whatever you do, don’t eat organic foods. You might actually get healthy, and we can’t have that now. Can we?

What this event should help to demonstrate is that "organic" food is not what people think it is (no pesticides, small farms). There are organically approved pesticides which are "natural" but not without toxicity or environmental issues. The vast majority of "organic" food is produced by the same companies that produce conventional. On the whole they do a good job with both, but the requirement to fertilize organic with things like manure cannot help but raise the risk. Yes, one can safely compost manure, but its pretty hard to be 100% effective.

Wow, maybe we should irradiate everything possible. That way no one will have to care about the amount of E. coli or any other disease - it can all be "cleaned."

In your sarcasm, you have accidentally said something correct. If we were irradiating most of our food, we wouldn't have to worry nearly as much about disease. There is absolutely no good reason why we shouldn't irradiate food.

And why limit it to fresh vegetables? Irradiate everything from any restaurant, so the employees don't even have to wash their hands after using the toilet.

Impractical in practice, since this would require restaurants to have their own cobalt sources or accelerators. However, I like the way you think. Maybe one day...

I mean, I'll eat potentially dangerous bacteria and fecal matter if it's irradiated, wouldn't you?

Stuff that has been irradiated is not potentially dangerous—it's sterile. Irradiation is quite effective. Things would still need to be kept reasonably clean for other reasons, though. For instance, many bacteria cause undesirable changes in the taste of the food. At any rate, this is better than the risk of death from contaminated food.

If you see the sarcasm, then you also see that irradiation is a crappy band-aid covering up a pussy, festering wound. I'd rather have the wound treated then have another band-aid.

How do you treat a wound? By cleaning it out. This is exactly what irradiation does. However, you're right that it is a good idea to prevent the wound in the first place. Irradiation just provides one extra level of safety—it is not a substitute for treating food cleanly and carefully. Obviously, though, that isn't an argument against irradiation. An airbag isn't a replacement for a seatbelt, but you're safer with both of them than you would be with just the seatbelt.