LOS ANGELES, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Federal health officials linked tainted spinach that caused the E.coli outbreak with three California counties, according to the Los Angeles Times on Saturday.

    The tainted spinach that sickened 166 people and killed one person nationwide came from facilities and farms in three California counties -- San Benito, Santa Clara and Monterey, the paper said.

    Federal officials Friday revised their blanket warning against eating fresh spinach, narrowing it to spinach from these three California counties linked to an E. coli outbreak that has spread to 25 states.

    "At this stage of the investigation, we know spinach grown in the rest of the U.S. and in California is not implicated in the current outbreak, therefore the public can be confident that spinach grown in non-implicated areas can be consumed," said Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

    He said state and federal investigators were working to further narrow the area from which the contaminated spinach came.

    California growers produce about three-quarters of the nation's spinach, and about 60 percent of it comes from the three-county region that has been implicated in the outbreak. Other spinach-producing counties are Ventura, Imperial and Riverside.

    The FDA's announcement was welcome news to the beleaguered spinach industry, said Tim Chelling, spokesman for the Western Growers Association.

    "We want to act responsibly and err on the side of caution, buta blanket warning is extreme," Chelling said. Enditem