Tomatoes and Peppers Suspected

Salsa is often made with tomatoes, cilantro, peppers, chilies, and garlic.

Since April 23 an outbreak of Salmonella food poisoning has sickened over 1000 people in the United States. Two-hundred ten have been hospitalized. One has died of causes aggravated by the Salmonella infection.

An aggressive effort by private, local, state and federal health and food safety officials to trace the origin and cause of the outbreak has been unsuccessful.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Salmonella is a group of bacteria that can cause diarrheal illness in humans. They are microscopic living creatures that pass from the feces of people or animals to other people or other animals." The bacteria often enters the food system through irrigation or run-off of infected water.

Profiles developed of those sickened by the Saintpaul strain of Salmonella since April seem to suggest fresh tomatoes, cerrano peppers, and/or cilantro could be the carriers. But testing of commercially available products has found no infection.

In late June Dr. David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's Associate Director for Foods, explained, "“we may not ultimately know the farm where these came from... That’s not that unusual with tomato outbreaks,” he said. “It’s not that infrequent for us to be unable to actually trace back specifically to the source.”

Those infected with the Saintpaul strain have been identified in 42 states and the District of Columbia. Concentrations in New Mexico, Texas, and Illinois constitute roughly 60 percent of the total.

More information, including regular updating, is available from the CDC at http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/saintpaul/

The industrialization of the food system has centralized both production and processing. Very large product volumes distributed over wide geographic areas result in any food safety problem being quickly transferred to large numbers of consumers.

The current Salmonella mystery demonstrates the potent threat presented by a compromised food safety system. Unless the source can be definitively identified, the cause cannot be known, and prevention or mitigation is frustrated. In 1984 ten salad bars in The Dalles, Oregon were contaminated with Salmonella by followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Seven hundred fifty were sickened and 45 were hospitalized in an attempt to influence election results. (Additional information is available from wbur.org)

In April 2008 the Federal Bureau of Investigation hosted the Third Annual Symposium on Agroterrorism which included a presentation on Salmonella water supply contamination and several other risks to the food system.

The US food system is risk amplifying rather than risk resilient. Whatever the risk - natural, accidental, or intentional - the current system is highly vulnerable.

POSTSCRIPT - On July 21 the FDA reported a confirmed finding of salmonella stpaul on jalepeno peppers. More is available from CNN.