Finally – FDA finds the Salmonella source – at a Mexican farm
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. So afraid of harming the revenue stream when people were obviously getting sick after eating in Mexican restaurants.
Half the population where I live is Mexican-American – and we all figured out what the problem was as soon as the FDA twerps admitted what was happening. 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”?
The Key Stone Cops at the FDA are giddy with the latest wild “case solved”.
First they destroyed the tomato industry.
Then it was the Lone Jalapeno theory.
Yesterday is was Sneaky Serranos.
What your above article missed is the latest-
The Smoking Rain Barrel.
Yes, the smoking rain barrel is the latest- which had the bacteria in it.
Although Mexico pointed out the rain barrel was not used to irrigate any pepper or other produce, FDA apparently cultured the strain in the rain barrel- a barrel set up to catch rain water from roof run off.
With investigations like this we are all well aware the FDA is not capable of conducting an investigation of anything.
After the FDA finishes destroying another agricultural industry, eventually we may or may not know the source of the infection.
Your guess of some Mexican places is as good as anything the FDA has come up with, but really does not fit the bill of wide spread cases, but at least it does not shut down entire classes of produce.
Serrano peppers are more slender than Jalapenos.
You will notice they added Serranos to the “cause” list, rather than removing Jalapenos.
batguano101
July 31, 2008 at 6:41 am
BG – following this from the start, what trips my trigger is that the FDA knew for weeks that people had eaten at Mexican restaurants before getting sick and didn’t release that fact.
As lame as not introducing the traceability originally offered in legislation in 2003-04.
moss
July 31, 2008 at 7:03 am
Rain barrel? You ain’t reading the FDA report, then. It says it was an irrigation ditch/system.
keaneo
July 31, 2008 at 8:05 am