WASHINGTON — Raw sprouts have again been linked to dozens of cases of food poisoning.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 63 people from Massachusetts and nine other states, most of them on the East Coast, fell ill with salmonella linked to bean sprouts from a supplier in New York.
The CDC said the supplier, Wonton Food Inc. of Brooklyn, N.Y., has agreed to stop production for now.
The outbreak is one of three recently linked to raw sprouts. Two listeria deaths and three listeria illnesses were linked to consumption of mung bean sprouts in the Midwest over the summer, and 19 E. coli illnesses were linked to raw clover sprouts in mostly Western states in May.
The illnesses were reported from late September to the beginning of November, according to the CDC. People became sick in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The one ill person from Montana was likely exposed on a trip to the East Coast, the CDC said.
Raw sprouts are a frequent culprit in foodborne illness because of the moist, warm conditions in which they are grown; there have been about 30 outbreaks linked to raw and lightly cooked sprouts since the 1990s.
US regulators have warned against eating them at all, advising consumers to cook them and to ask that they be left off their plate at restaurants.