TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Salmonella Outbreak Tied To Mexican Pepper Farm

ADVERTISEMENT

The Washington Post

Published: July 31, 2008

WASHINGTON - A three-month-old salmonella outbreak initially linked to raw tomatoes has been traced to a jalapeno and serrano pepper farm in Mexico.

Investigators found the Salmonella saint paul strain in irrigation water and serrano pepper samples from the farm, which is in the northeastern state of Nuevo Leon partially bordering Texas.

The Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers not to eat raw serrano peppers as well as raw jalapenos.

"We have a smoking gun, it appears," Lonnie King, a director at the Centers for Disease Control, said.

The discovery of the outbreak strain on the farm does not answer all the questions confronting investigators. But it will improve their chances of stopping the outbreak, which has sickened more than 1,300 people since April.

It also gets them closer to a full explanation of an outbreak that stumped the most experienced disease detectives and drew criticism from tomato growers and Congress about the FDA's and CDC's handling of the case.

Lawmakers Wednesday began the first of two hearings on what went wrong in the investigation, which was initially focused on tomatoes, and later expanded to include jalapeno and serrano peppers.

Lawmakers had summoned top FDA and CDC officials to testify.

Anyone expecting a grilling was disappointed. Almost as soon as he took his seat in front of the microphone, the FDA's top food safety official, David Acheson, went off script, starting not with his prepared testimony but with news of the Salmonella saint paul finding in Mexico, information he said that he learned just two hours before the hearing.

The discovery did not let the FDA and the CDC off the hook entirely.

Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif., chairman of the House Agriculture subcommittee, asked Acheson to get back to the panel with answers to several questions, including when he first heard that CDC officials suspected jalapeno peppers were making people sick.

Investigators did not look into whether the jalapeno and serrano peppers could be making people sick until early July when people continued to get sick despite a nationwide warning against eating raw red plum, Roma and vineless red round tomatoes.

The FDA recently lifted the tomato warning, saying tomatoes now on the market are safe. But by then, tomato growers had incurred more than $100 million in losses.

Investigators have yet to find a contaminated tomato. And many growers assert that their tomatoes were never involved.

However, FDA and CDC officials continued to insist that tomatoes and jalapeno peppers could have spread the bacteria if they were contaminated on the same farm or if one cross-contaminated the other in the distribution chain.

The discovery of Salmonella saint paul in both the jalapeno and serrano peppers partly vindicated proponents of that theory.

Acheson told lawmakers Wednesday that investigators may find a packing facility or warehouse, where tomatoes and jalapeno and serrano peppers crossed paths.

"We know the salmonella was on two produce items; it could easily have been on three," he said. "It is certainly plausible that tomatoes were responsible for the early phases of the outbreak."

Investigators still have a lot to sort out, starting with the relationships between the Nuevo Leon farm where the contaminated water and peppers were found and another farm in Tamaulipas that supplied tainted jalapenos to Agricola Zaragoza, a small distributor in Texas.

So far, the only connection is a packing facility in Nuevo Leon. It bought peppers from both farms and supplied Agricola Zaragoza.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT