一年前，艾希莉·阿姆斯特朗还是个健康好动的两岁小孩。一些小孩子不吃蔬菜，但对艾希莉来说却没有问题。
Is your food safe
CNN REPORTER: A year ago Ashley Armstrong was a healthy, rambunctious two-year old. Some kids won't eat vegetables, but Ashley, no problem.
ELIZABETH ARMSTRONG (MOTHER OF E. COLI VICTIM): We are very healthy eaters, we love lots of salads, lots of fresh vegetables, fresh fruits.
CNN REPORTER: Then last September after a family dinner of lasagna and spinach salad, Ashley got sick with vomiting and diarrhea.
CNN REPORTER: Well what happened next with Ashley?
ELIZABETH ARMSTRONG: We found blood in her diaper and that didn't seem right. It started getting worse, more frequent, that's when they saw her kidneys were failing.
CNN REPORTER: The culprit, E. coli 0157 H7, the bad kind. Once it was a problem in tainted hamburgers, but since 1995 there've been more than twenty outbreaks linked to fresh greens like the baby spinach in the Armstrong salad. After weeks of fighting for her life and months of dialysis, Ashley is home again, but life will never be the same. She's on several medications, doctors say she'll need a kidney transplant in a few years. Fresh vegetables are strictly limited.
ELIZABETH ARMSTRONG: We thought it was safe, it says wash three times and put it in a bowl and we ate it for dinner and our lives were changed forever.
MICHAEL ARMSTRONG (FATHER OF E. COLI VICTIM): I was pretty angry, um actually, um especially after I found out this is a known problem and then they came back and said even two or three weeks after the, after the outbreak "It's fine now, the spinach is fine, you can eat it, it's back on the shelf." What did they do differently? What did they change to make it safe?
CNN REPORTER: The Armstrongs testified before congress asking for tougher food safety laws.
MICHAEL ARMSTRONG: It wasn't getting better, it was getting worse.
CNN REPORTER: Most spinach growers are now taking voluntary steps to keep their spinach safe. Congress must decide if that's enough. Now along with those congressional hearings democrats in both the house and the senate have introduced bills to beef up, if you will, food safety but they told us it's not likely to pass this year. Ashley's recovery is ongoing. She went back to school a few months ago, is doing well physically, but she still has these long term health issues. Doctors say there is no doubt she's going to need a kidney transplant probably in three to ten years. Because she's so young she's likely to need multiple transplants. A kidney typically lasts about twenty years so if she gets a transplant at age ten, she's probably going to need another one at age thirty and so on and so on. You know, Anderson, on a personal note as a father it was hard to hear some of the stories from Ashley's parents, especially when Mr. Armstrong talked about watching her lie there and thinking "It's my job to protect her, I couldn't do anything." It could easily happen to anyone, the whole story is extremely powerful and extremely moving. You can see it all in my special this weekend.
