Largest Salmonella Outbreak in History Still Mystery
Seven weeks into the Salmonella Outbreak investigation and federal health officials are still finding it difficult to pinpoint the method of delivery. Cilantro and jalapenos are now under the same suspicious umbrella as tomatoes. Many find it is easy to fault the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control for their inability to zero in on the source and food type of contamination.
“This has gone on longer and has been more complicated than anything I've worked on at FDA,” expressed Dr. David Acheson the FDA’s food safety chief told AP Television. Many are comparing the spinach E.coli outbreak from 2006, but officials say this is different. The spinach affected was packaged with a barcode, the cilantro, tomatoes and jalapenos are sold as fresh produce with no barcode. “We really, really got spoiled, if you will, with the spinach outbreak,” Dr. Robert Tauxe, food safety chief at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Associated Press. In the spinach outbreak victims could remember what they ate, but in this episode the stricken have difficulty remembering as well as differing food items. They say, "'Well, I'm not sure, I may have had guacamole, or a garnish," Tauxe said.
This latest salmonella outbreak has lasted an unusually long time, with a record of 1,065 confirmed cases, the latest found on June 26. The toll of this outbreak far surpasses recent outbreaks of any foodborne disease: salmonella in peanut butter in 2005, hepatitis A from green onions in 2003 and the spinach outbreak of 2005. The tainting has yet to break the cyclospora-spoiled raspberries from the mid-1990s. The current FDA search is looking to connections between jalapenos and tomatoes. The CDC just finished comparing 144 people who got sick in June with 287 people who live near them but didn't fall ill. Perhaps there are farms that grew tomatoes earlier in the spring and then switched to pepper harvesting, or distribution centers that handled both types of produce and contaminated incoming produce, Acheson said.
The government's asking the public to continue avoiding certain raw tomatoes, red round, plum and Roma unless they were grown in areas cleared of suspicion. The CDC is advising that people at highest risk of severe illness from salmonella should not eat raw jalapeno and serrano peppers with the most vulnerable being the elderly, those with weak immune systems and infants. Serranos are on the list because they're hard to distinguish from jalapenos.
