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Salmonella Traced To Mexico

Mike

Well-known member
Salmonella Outbreak Traced to Irrigation System, Pepper at Mexican Farm
Wednesday, July 30, 2008

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The salmonella strain linked to a nationwide outbreak has been found in irrigation water and a serrano pepper at a Mexican farm, federal health officials said Wednesday.

Dr. David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's food safety chief, called the finding a key breakthrough in the case, as did another health official.

"We have a smoking gun, it appears," said Dr. Lonnie King who directs the center for foodborne illnesses at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Acheson said the farm is in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. Previously, the FDA had traced a contaminated jalapeno pepper to a farm in another part of Mexico.

Acheson and other officials were grilled at a congressional hearing about why the investigation originally focused on tomatoes.

The officials insisted that tomatoes still cannot be ruled out and that it is quite possible that the outbreak was caused by several different kinds of contaminated produce.

The outbreak has sickened more than 1,300 people since April.

Tomatoes had been the prime suspect in the nationwide outbreak for weeks. But last week, the FDA said only jalapeno peppers grown in Mexico were implicated in the nationwide salmonella outbreak. The FDA said then it had found the same strain of salmonella responsible for the outbreak on a single Mexican-grown jalapeno in a south Texas produce warehouse.

If it turns out the tainted irrigation water was also used on tomatoes, it could provide some of the evidence that federal authorities are looking for to back their original focus on the fruit.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Looks like all these tainted imports are going to bring more regulation and rules for everyone- since the industry has not been able to police itself...Sames gonna happen with USDA if the e-coli problem isn't taken care of....

Brasher: Unsafe food leads to calls for increased FDA authority more authority



By PHILIP BRASHER

Des Moines Register - Iowa

August 10, 2008



Washington, D.C. — Toys were first. Food may be next on the agenda for Congress in a wave of government regulation.



Congress has overwhelmingly agreed to give the Consumer Product Safety Commission more money and authority to regulate children's products and require third-party testing of toys.



Now, lawmakers are taking aim at the Food and Drug Administration. The agency regulates 80 percent of the food Americans eat but has only a fraction of the funding and the staff of the Agriculture Department, which regulates the other 20 percent, primarily meat.



Little is likely to get done this year - it's too close to the election - but a food agency overhaul is likely to be high on the congressional agenda next year. The food industry, which once resisted increased regulation, has been hammered with one costly outbreak after another. The latest, involving a strain of salmonella bacteria, devastated the U.S. tomato industry before it was linked instead to Mexican-grown jalapeno peppers.



The agency itself is asking for more authority.



"You will see the food industry being supportive of government action," said Bryan Silbermann, president of the Produce Marketing Association. "We've seen what's happened over the last eight years of government inaction."







Growing Republican support



As was the case with toy reform, key Republicans also are getting behind the idea of increasing government food regulation.



Three of the top four Republicans on the Senate committee that oversees the agency — Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Richard Burr of North Carolina — are cosponsoring a bill that aims to do for that agency what Congress did this year for the Consumer Product Safety Commission.



The bill, introduced by Illinois Democrat Richard Durbin, authorizes the food agency to set commodity-specific safety standards for produce and require importers to verify that their foods they're bringing were produced according to U.S. rules.



The food administration also would be authorized to certify third-party inspections of domestic and foreign food facilities and would be empowered for the first time to require recalls of tainted products. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., is a bill cosponsor.



"There are parts of this bill that you couldn't (previously) bring Republicans around to," Durbin said, citing the recall authority as an example.



Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, who has criticized the agency's regulation of prescription drugs, also said Congress is likely to do something about its oversight of food.



"It's recognized in both political parties and recognized in food as well as pharmaceuticals that (the agency) needs an overhaul," Grassley said. "It needs more money. It needs more inspectors."







House involvement



A separate food agency overhaul bill is under development in the House.



The produce industry's frustration with the current system spilled out at a recent hearing by the House Agriculture Committee on the salmonella outbreak.



Anthony DiMare, vice president of a family-run tomato company, told the committee that sales dropped 60 percent after tomatoes were initially fingered as the source of the outbreak. Operations were off 20 percent at the end of July. The outbreak was eventually traced to jalapenos.



"We don't know how long it will take for consumer confidence in fresh tomatoes to rebound," DiMare told the panel.







Tasks ahead



It's not clear how much Congress is likely to do to change the way outbreaks are investigated. That job is divided among federal agencies as well as state and local authorities with varying levels of funding and expertise.



Durbin isn't ready to talk about something as sweeping as unifying the food-safety system. That would mean merging various committee chairmen who now share jurisdiction over the food agency, Agriculture Department and other agencies that oversee food. Better to start with bolstering the food agency, he said.



"We have to allow this agency to mature into an effective 21st-century agency to protect families," he said.



If the recent votes on the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act are any indication, Durbin should have allies. The Senate passed the bill, 89-3. The House vote was 424-1.



desmoinesregister.com
 

mrj

Well-known member
Oldtimer, have you ever checked www.bifsco.org?

That is the website of the group of organizations and businesses covering the beef industry from producer to retailer which has spent about $350 Million per year since 1993, most of it from post-producer sources, to find ways to end the E. coli problem.

It appears to me the main non-involved possible source of E. coli in foods is the food handlers themselves. People, including those who handle beef and other involved foods, can and do carry the virulent E. coli O157:H7, but their Unions prevent any testing of those workers through their "rights to privacy" rules. Isn't it about time to end that silliness when consumers' health is sacrificed to union rules????

mrj
 
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