Just a few weeks ago, the earliest signs of an outbreak of E. Coli surfaced in New Jersey. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that 121 people in 25 states had been infected. While health officials narrowed the source down to romaine lettuce, investigators are unable to reconstruct the path of the chopped lettuce that made people sick from Washington state to Louisiana to Connecticut. “To improve food safety, we need a stronger chain of data,” Wired magazine's Maryn McKenna writes. “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.”
