A salmonella outbreak in the United States and Canada has been linked to irrigation water and serrano peppers at a Mexican farm, says the FDA. Dr. David Acheson, the FDA’s food safety chief, said the farm is in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, and called the discovery “a key breakthrough.”
The salmonella outbreak, which has sickened more than 1,200 people since April, had been linked to raw Mexican jalapeños and serranos. Last week, the Mexican government had called an FDA advisory saying so “premature.”
The FDA now advises consumers to avoid raw jalapeño peppers grown in Mexico and any foods containing raw jalapeño peppers grown in Mexico. Likewise, no one should eat raw serrano peppers from Mexico.
It still remains that these bureaucrat flunkeys for the food distribution industry wasted months before they would even say the word “Mexican” publicly.
Couldn’t they have said, “Hey – most of these folks ate at a Mexican restaurant before getting sick. Don’t eat anything uncooked when you go to your favorite Mexican restaurant till we track this down”?
Yea right. We are supposed to believe the FDA has authority to go in and inspect a foreign farm when they have said repeatedly in hearings that finding the source of such outbreaks is too complex to pin down on any one thing, and that they have no authority in other countries. My research keeps pointing to the cause being traced to bad apples.
This is the part that really bothers me. When this first started they had all these strange specific details, certain tomatoes were safe, if the tomato still had the vine attached it was safe, etc..
Where did that information come from, How were they telling us certain things were safe when they had no clue what was causing the problem?
I really hope the agriculture industry will go after the FDA.
And I have yet to hear of one single case of Salmonella poisoning here in Mexico. As a Mexican living in Nuevo Leon (In Monterrey to be exact), one would think that something grown in our backyard would somehow make it to our markets. And yet, no poisoning cases. Not one.
My guess is that the FDA is just trying to blame those who will complain the least. They tried to blame the tomato guys, but they were having none of it. Now they try with the chile guys. Let’s see how that works out.
Serrano chiles, yum!
I grow my own serranos, and like tomatoes they are commercially harvested green and hard. A ripe serrano has a very sweet flavor, and they can get fiercly hot.
The agricultural industry PWNS the FDA! Corruption reigns supreme in Bushmerica. Certain farms took to testing their own products and provided the FDA with their own proof.
I don’t know what to believe on this level.
Gee. Looks like a failure to reach concensus here.
The FDA is too aggressive. The FDA is not aggressive enough.
The FDA should go after the agriculture industry. The agriculture industry should go after the FDA.
The FDA are “bureaucrat flunkeys for the food distribution industry”. The FDA blame the first distributor they can find in the food distribution industry.
I think the bottom line here is that it’s tough to track down the source of salmonella (or whatever) in an industry that sells tomatos or jalapeño peppers, where there’s no clear trail from grocery store shelves back to individual farms.
Perhaps if we hadn’t blown a trillion bucks on Dumbya’s trophy war and his tax credits for the rich, more money could have been allocated to agencies like the FDA whose role is to make life safer for Americans.
#3 – Your logic doesn’t fly.
Try going to India and eating their locally grown foods for a few days. You will get sick as a dog, but the local folks eat the same food with no side effects.
No, Mister Mustard, part of the Repuke Agenda is to DESTROY GOVERNMENT REGULATION OF CORPORATIONS as much as they can !!! That’s why I like Nader’s proposal to END CORPORATE PERSONHOOD AND ANY STANDING THEY HAVE IN COURT !!! And I would advocate that we ABOLISH ALL PERSONAL TAXES AND RAISE REVENUE EXCLUSIVELY THROUGH CORPORATE TAXES – LET THE ARMY OF IRS AGENTS AND AN ARMY OF CORPORATE ACCOUNTANTS DO BATTLE OVER THE BUCKS, AND LEAVE ORDINARY WORKING FOLKS ALONE !!!
[Please JimD, easy on the caps. – ed.]
#6, the first thing I would advocate is for rationing the use of caps in forum posts.
#7 – JimD – Do you really think anyone bothers to read your message when you use all caps? You are just wasting your time.
Again you can argue certain points all day long, this is the important question.
FDA “The following list of tomatoes are safe…”
How the hell did they come to that conclusion?
#10 – Rider on the Storm
>>How the hell did they come to that conclusion?
I believe the theory was that tomatoes on the vine were safe because the shit-water they wash the tomatoes in soaked into the tomato through the pulpy hole where the vine was.
So if the vine was still attached, the shit-water wouldn’t be drawn into to body of the tomato as if by a sponge.
ever been to Mexico ?
I went on my wedding honeymoon there
You have to tip for any service 100 workers
I cannot imagine the level of service on the farms for the vegetables and food service products
#11 Mister Mustard
Since they never found a contaminated tomato they would have no clue how the tomato was contaminated. How did they rule out surface contamination. Plain and simple they just made this crap up, they didn’t even know what vegetable was to blame, therefore they could not make any conclusions about what was safe.
#12: Yes, everyone asks for tips, but you’re not encouraged to do anything if you don’t feel like it. I.E. in Las Vegas people is much more arrogant and aggressive about that, starting with the cab drivers. Anyway, there are two types of farming industries. The first is the corporate stuff, fully automated, clean, standards abiding, world class farms which deliver the product in polyurethane or cellophane wrapping, then there are the poor third-world medieval-like farms which are the ones irrigated by dirty water. In Mexico, where I live, there has been since the 70s a campaign about washing all fruits and vegetables with a brush to avoid all kinds of digestive diseases. It’s totally normal to expect catching salmonella, tuberculosis, hepatitis, and what not if you don’t wash your vegetables. The same goes for your hands after going to the bathroom. If you don’t follow that simple rule you’ll get sick. The same should apply in the US if you go to the supermarket and buy raw stuff. THAT’S what the FDA should be doing instead of pointless “investigations”: constantly informing people about safety rules for raw foods through TV campaigns. I’ve been many times in the US in the last 12 months and have never seen anything like that on TV, at any time.
#13 – Rider on the Storm
Of course they can’t rule out surface contamination. They also can’t rule out people who wipe their ass with their fingers and then go prepare a salad for the family without washing their hands. Intelligent consumers wash their produce before eating. There’s no fool-proof way to proof things against fools.
As to the on-the-vine hypothesis, there’s evidence that shows shit (like from shit-water) is absorbed into the stump where the vine used to be.
You think they just make this stuff up. They don’t. For further information, see
http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/tomatoes.html
> The FDA now advises consumers
> to avoid raw
> jalapeño peppers grown in
> Mexico and any foods
> containing raw jalapeño peppers
> grown in Mexico.
> Likewise, no one should
> eat raw serrano peppers
> from Mexico.
Maybe from my cold dead hands…
In the Southwest, jalapenos are used in almost everything. I wouldn’t be surprised to find baby food with jalapeno or serrano peppers.
Peter Piper puked a peck of pickled peppers.
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper puked.
If Peter Piper puked a peck of pickled peppers,
How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper puke?
What if the salmonella had come from China?
#18 “What if the salmonella had come from China?”
What is Sal had come from Manila?
Just a note that just because a restaurant serves Mexican food, that doesn’t mean their produce comes from Mexico.
It’s easy to ridicule “bureaucrat flunkeys” but determining the cause of this is a complicated thing. Much more complicated than spewing out a blog post that indicates how incredibly intelligent you are. Eideard should get a job with the FDA so that these kind of things don’t happen, then he could start on world peace.
#20 – MadMan
>>Eideard should get a job with the FDA so that
>>these kind of things don’t happen, then he
>>could start on world peace.
Don’t hold your breath. It’s so much easier to criticize than to do. And those who can’t do, criticize.
#3 – Easy. It’s because they are chiles maquiladores.
#20, Sane,
Blaming the editor is only shooting the messenger. The agriculture industry pressured the FDA into lowering traceability standards. Instead of knowing relatively quickly, it took inspectors weeks to chase down the origin of the salmonella.
I’m in Mexico now with my asshole burning and I’m getting a kick out of these replies.