Bush administration, right?
Do you really want to know what water they were using for irrigation?
NO MORE TACOS!!!!
"Salmonella cases traced to peppers grown in Mexico; Outbreak had left 1,300 ill in the US" by Bob Dart, Cox News Service | July 31, 2008
WASHINGTON - The outbreak of salmonella poisoning that made more than 1,300 people ill across the country and cost American tomato growers more than $300 million has been traced to peppers grown on a farm in Mexico, federal officials said yesterday.
David Acheson, the head of food safety at the Food and Drug Administration, said the strain of Salmonella saintpaul that caused the nationwide outbreak has been found in irrigation water and serrano peppers on a Mexican farm.
Members questioned Acheson and King sharply about why it has taken since May to track down the source of the food poisoning and whether they were mistaken all along in associating the illness with tomatoes.
The warning from the federal agencies led to a mass removal of tomatoes from grocery market bins and restaurant menus and cost the industry more than $300 million, said Representative Dennis Cardoza, Democrat of California, the chairman of the subcommittee. He asked Acheson whether a single contaminated tomato was ever found.
I stopped eating tomatoes!
Acheson conceded that no contaminated tomatoes were found, but he refused to completely clear tomatoes. He said tomatoes as well as jalapeno and serrano peppers were grown on the Mexican farm that had contaminated irrigation water and tomatoes were processed through the same packing center in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. So it is "plausible" that some of the illnesses were caused by contaminated tomatoes, he said.
This the FDA or the CIA?
Officials still wouldn't acknowledge that their agencies had been wrong on tomatoes."
