Not in My Food.org : Know what you're eating
While more people get diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps from eating salmonella-laced tomatoes, the FDA is still trying to hunt down the source of the outbreak.
Last week the FDA announced that it’s going to expand the search to investigate packing or shipping sites and communal water sources on farms. FDA officials are also checking out other veggies used to make salsa–like jalapeno peppers and cilantro–as possible outbreak suspects.
According to the CDC, salmonella are usually transmitted to humans by eating foods contaminated with animal feces. Food microbiologist, Keith Warriner, explained the science:
The bacteria probably come from groundwater contaminated with animal feces, he says. Once Salmonella gets on and into a tomato, the fruit acts like an incubator. Bacteria divide even in the cool temperatures of packing houses. ‘If you get a few samples into the internal tissue, then they will grow for sure.’
Fresh vegetables are increasingly packaged and shipped in centralized locations, so instead of a localized outbreak, we see a nationwide or even worldwide epidemic.
In 2007, about 125 billion pounds of cattle, broilers, hogs, and turkeys were produced in the U.S. As Vegan Bits says rather bluntly, “that’s a lot of poop to process!”
Much of that poop is recycled on our nation’s fields to feed the crops, including veggies. Without careful handling, poop used as fertilizer can contaminate irrigation water and even directly contaminate crops. Mexico denies its involvement, so perhaps we need to look at our own food system.
If you don’t know what to do with the tomatoes you’ve decided not to eat, read Tom’s suggestion over at Grist. Watch out, stomach, those red orbs can be dangerous.
Having spent 8 out of 12 months in the field last year in Mexico running tests on seafood, vegetables,etc., we quickly discovered that the majority of cilantro was contaminated with salmonella. We found it in hotel restaurants and cilantro farms. We found it on lettuce as well, however, we had no findings on tomatoes, and other vegetables, including peppers. It is my opinion, that more attention should be paid to cilantro than tomatoes and peppers from Mexico. The Mexicans are very aware that they have problems, and I was pleasantly surprised at how good their food safety programs are run at their restaurants. Every utensil, pot and pan, and cutting boards were color coded so that they don’t cross contaminate when preping their food. Why, are they so careful, because they know they have problems. There was a time when you went to a restaurant, and all the food was from the USA. Now, over 70% is imported from other countries. In my opinion, when you find salmonella at several farms growing the same thing, it is more proof positive than finding one pepper out of millions. There were some reports that salsa could have been the culprit, and Mexican salsa usually has cilantro in it.