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It was the jalapeno all along. Yesterday the F.D.A. announced that after a three month investigation into a salmonella outbreak that has sickened at least 1,251 people in 43 states, officials have finally been able to match the bacteria strain to a single Mexican-grown jalapeno pepper handled by a small Texas produce shipper. Fresh tomatoes were previously believed to be the culprit, and an F.D.A. warning against certain tomato varieties has cost growers an estimated $450 million. Oopsy!
But far from issuing a mea culpa to tomato growers, F.D.A. officials told reporters yesterday that the salmonella outbreak still could have been caused by tomatoes. Who knows? They also haven't determined where the guilty pepper became tainted – in Mexico, at the plant in Texas, or somewhere in between. The plant is recalling all its jalapenos, but the FDA has no idea how widely its produce was distributed.
So now tomatoes are okay, but the government is warning everyone to avoid fresh raw jalapenos, or products made with them, like fresh salsa. In the mean time, the outbreak has increased calls for the food industry to track produce from the farm to table with bar codes. Michael Doyle, the director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, tells the Times, “The recent situation shows that we have deficiencies in the system. My experience with the industry is that in part, certain segments of the industry would rather not have food trace-back.”
Photo courtesy edEx.
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The FDA is such a joke; when will we wake up and realize that a federal bureaucracy like the FDA is the problem?
"1,251 people in 43 states" is statistically insignificant. That's most of the US, probably more than 200 million people. You're probably more likely to win the lottery than eat a contaminated jalapeño.
Bar codes are a horrible idea. This would effectively kill small growers with enormous expenses. And it is the small growers who are producing the safest cleanest products. It's the mega agribusiness farms that are the biggest polluters and users of pesticides and victims of animal waste runoff they themselves create. This bar code idea would only benefit these large operations, primarily by putting the smaller farms out of business.
"'1,251 people in 43 states'" is statistically insignificant"
I agree completely. This whole thing is completely media driven. Fear, fear, fear. Fear everything!
And also, are they saying all the cases are caused by ONE jalepeno?
The anti-regulator's cry is always "small businesses!!!"
But I don't see anything that is all that difficult to implement at the grower's level. They just need some barcode printers and a basic recordkeeping system.
It's the middlemen that would have more issues, since they're buying from multiple sources, possibly mixing everything together and repacking, then selling that to several outlets.
Note that records are already required under the Bioterrorism Act of 2002. They just don't have to be electronic or have barcodes. I'm not convinced that barcodes are really a solution to anything, but I don't think it would be that difficult to implement.
You want to know how this happens? Just ask George Lopez. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5r9aK3mWtQ
Politburo, you may want to raad this:
http://blog.ruhlman.com/ruhlmancom/2007/05/nais_support_an_1.html
SP obviously there are good regulations and there are bad regulations. The NAIS proposal, which is completely different from the produce barcoding we were discussing, appears to be a bad regulation (though the article isn't exactly an unbiased source and presents some silly arguments, and one ridiculous commenter somehow managed to compare this proposal to the Holocaust and Stalin).
Most regulations will impact a small business more than a large business, due to basic economies of scale. That's just a fact of life, so I don't think that alone is a valid argument against a regulation.
I also don't like the attitude expressed by some, including yourself, that small producers are automatically good and large producers are automatically bad. While large producers are certainly the source of most, if not all, problems (and their practices are unsustainable, polluting, etc), small producers aren't saints just because they only have a 50-head herd.
I remember reading this story yesterday while eating a burrito that had jalapenos in it. I finished the burrito anyway.
Man, I knew it was Jalapenos! It couldn't be my friend the Tomato. Jalapenos have a mexican name, DUH!
Now they're going to have a good look at nacho cheese. Stadium toilets across the U.S. will heave a huge collective flush of relief.