Contaminated Tomato Update

by Aimee Amodio | More from this Blogger

19 Jul 2008 04:24 PM

After months of investigation and few answers, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced that it is once again safe to eat tomatoes.

However the FDA still does not know where the contamination came from. The warning has been lifted because there are no longer any tomatoes coming onto the market from locations that were on the suspect list.

Towards the end of June, with the outbreak finally starting to slow, new warnings emerged. The FDA warns that people who are risk of salmonella (like infants, the elderly, and people with impaired immune systems) avoid fresh hot peppers like jalapenos and serranos. Canned jalapeno and Serrano peppers (and processed foods that contain them) are thought to be safe.

Because the FDA still doesn't know the source of the salmonella outbreak and because many people who developed salmonellosis early on ate raw tomatoes in the form of fresh salsa, peppers are now part of the ongoing investigation. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believe that the source of the contamination may still be on the market -- new cases of salmonellosis were appearing as late as June 15th, even though warnings went out earlier.

Since the outbreak began, more than twelve hundred people throughout North America were sick with salmonella. Nearly one hundred people were hospitalized.

Will the FDA and CDC find an answer? I hope they do. There are two main theories at the moment -- a warehouse that is contaminating the produce stored and packed there, or a problem with some other produce item (like hot peppers). But when you look at how many hands encounter a piece of fruit or a vegetable -- from the person who picks the produce to the person who puts it on the shelves at the food store -- this may be a hard case to crack.

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