June 13, 2008
Salmonella Tomatoes Have Hit New York City
An FDA official brandishes a bag of tomatoes being tested for salmonella. AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian
As if mocking the inadequacy of federal investigators, a ruthless army of salmonella-tainted tomatoes continues to sicken Americans, and the FDA seems utterly helpless to pinpoint the source. Frustrated officials all but admitted that the trail had run cold yesterday, and the agency's food safety chief, Dr. David Acheson, told reporters “maybe we were being too optimistic” in earlier statements about cracking the case.
New York City officials reported the city's first salmonella illness yesterday; it occurred sometime before June 1st. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released no details on the individual, and it’s unclear whether this contradicts earlier FDA assurances that New York tomatoes are safe, or if the resident was simply sickened by out-of-state tomatoes. The number of people made ill from the outbreak soared to 228 yesterday, as 61 previously unknown cases came to light. At least 25 people have now been hospitalized, and the FDA said that salmonella may have hastened a cancer patient’s death in Texas.
The FDA attributes the salmonella outbreak to uncooked red tomatoes of the plum, Roma, and round-grown varieties. Officials still maintain that cherry and grape tomatoes, tomatoes sold attached to the vine, and homegrown are safe for consumption; that determination is based on assurances from victims that they did not eat these varieties of tomatoes. And today the Times checks in on the FDA’s long overdue food-safety plan, which has left some lawmakers very underwhelmed.
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grow your own!
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That picture is worth a million.
"BEHOLD THE OFFENDING TOMATOES!"
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It appears the happy go lucky guy in the photo ate several of them prior to the photo shoot.
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that dude is awesome!
has anybody even been able to explain how all this produce is getting dosed with bacteria normally associated with meat? read hubert selby's "waiting period," this could be a terrorist attack ...
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jimmylegs: I believe it's from animal feces being carried by either irrigation or rain from where animals are kept to where food is being grown.
Does it seem like this sort of thing is happening more often, or is getting reported more widely? Does the fact that food is travelling such long distances from the farm to the plate make these outbreaks more widespread and harder to pinpoint and contain?
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it's the chinese i'm tellin u
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This is why you should buy your tomatoes from the greenmarket.
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I believe these outbreaks are more frequent and it's because food production is increasingly more industrialized, less "natural" and short-cuts are taken to drive costs down.
We need better food safety laws to enforce minimum standards.
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I was down for the count for 5 days last week with what I thought was food poisoning. It finally let up; but man, that was gruesome.
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Given that there's all of one person in the city with salmonella, isn't it possible that there was some mishandling of raw meat rather than contaminated tomatoes?
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Last night the TV newscaster said that it could be 1-3 days after eating a tomato before an individual becomes ill (symptoms similar to the flu).
If that's the case, I guess salmonella poisoning is different than food poisoning. With food poisoning, the symptoms are almost immediate.
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Missed you slappy. Hope everything came out all right.
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Think of all this as an opportunity:
A ruthless army of salmonella-tainted tomatoes and John McCain comes to town.
Just saying...
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What happened to washing your food before you eat it?
My great great grandma decided to go taste testing like some kind of princess at the local market and got cholera and shortly died.u
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More lax agricultural oversight on behalf of the Bush administration's appeasement to lobbyists. We need more in the budget to fun the unjust war. I'd rather pay an extra few cents for the diligence of making sure feces doesn't mix with my vegetables.
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Sounds to me like a promo for M. Night's movie.
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You people are tomatoist! Your comments should be deleted because you're clearly bigoted towards innocent fruits/vegetables that cannot defend themselves.
And for those in the know, Salmonella makes a delicious vinaigrette.
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So the salmonella is actually impregnated in the tomato? How interesting. I mean, I've been using cow shit for fertilizer for years.