Just a few days ago, the Centers for Disease Control came out with new advice regarding the ongoing E. coli outbreak involving romaine lettuce.

Here’s an excerpt:

Advice to Consumers:

Do not eat or buy romaine lettuce unless you can confirm it is not from the Yuma, Arizona, growing region.

Product labels often do not identify growing regions; so, do not eat or buy romaine lettuce if you do not know where it was grown.

This advice includes whole heads and hearts of romaine, chopped romaine, and salads and salad mixes containing romaine lettuce. If you do not know if the lettuce in a salad mix is romaine, do not eat it.

We had just purchased a bag of hearts of romaine that was on sale at Times Supermarket in Kahala. We examined the bag, but it didn’t identify the specific source of the lettuce. So we didn’t have any way of knowing whether it came from Arizona. We thought about eating it, figuring the risk is small, but decided to listen to the CDC this time around.

So Meda then took the unopened bag back to Times for a refund. When she went to the customer service desk and explained she was returning it due to the CDC advisory, no one seemed to know what she was talking about. And while she was waiting for a refund (which she did receive), an employee went and put the bag back on the shelf to be sold again.

It was probably perfectly legal. But in light of the ongoing E. coli outbreak, it certainly seemed like the staff should have been better informed about the problem and the issues it poses for retailers.

I’ll just say that it wasn’t a moment that increased our confidence as consumers.