Over the past three months, the nation has been told by the FDA not to eat certain types of fresh tomatoes due to an outbreak of Salmonella saintpaul; which now totals over 1,000 confirmed individual cases in 42 states and the District of Columbia at last count.
Neither the CDC nor the FDA, the two Federal agencies responsible and accountable to the American public for these matters, has been able to accurately identify the source of the outbreak, let alone definitively whether or not tomatoes were the responsible vehicle which caused the disease.
There has been much discussion and dismay from TV pundits to Members of Congress expressing outrage and indignation of the failure of the FDA to quickly and accurately identify a product and, in effect, stop this epidemic of Salmonellosis from harming hundreds and hundreds of Americans. Clearly, this is not an unreasonable question or expectation for citizens to expect of their government.
Lost in this discussion are two groups, one the CDC, and some of their State Health Department partners, who seemingly have failed to accurately conduct comprehensive case control studies with meaningful data from both the cases and the controls to accurately understand what the controls consumed differently from the cases and to follow up with the FDA with scrupulous trace back, which would narrow the field.
Unfortunately, as of this date, the field seems to be expanding, possibly even away from tomatoes to fresh jalapeno peppers and fresh cilantro. As of this date, the CDC is stating “the accumulated data from all investigations indicate that jalapeno peppers cause some illnesses but they do not explain all illnesses. Raw tomatoes, fresh Serrano peppers and fresh cilantro also remain under investigation.”
The second group, which has been much maligned as having “close ties to the FDA” are the producers of tomatoes who have suffered enormous financial loss, since it is abundantly clear that wholesome tomatoes exist in all states and all counties of states in which the FDA have parsed out a county-by-county list.
For some reason, there seems to be a movement to try to blame Mexico, and it should be pointed out, that of the numerous produce-related outbreaks, few have been from anywhere other than the United States, with the majority from California.
This type of xenophobic thought process is counter-productive, since we need the assistance of all governments to work for food safety and finger-pointing will not assist in this process.
As a matter of fact, on my last trip to Mexico, in the middle of a field of farm workers, I actually saw a Mexican National Health Services van staffed by a medical doctor, nurse and dentist. I must admit, I have never seen any health care or screening provided in any state where I have visited fields or other agricultural growing facilities.
As a side note, any and all workers with any gastrointestinal symptoms are automatically removed from work and sent to a laboratory for culture with the grower notified. We The People are to blame for this fiasco since we have allowed the budget for the FDA to dwindle and we have allowed the greatest politicalization of the CDC to occur in its glorious history.
These are not only our opinions, but have been stated in respected peer-reviewed journals, such as The Lancet, and have been uttered in a bipartisan manner in Congress.
Let’s hope that the CDC can pick itself up by its bootstraps, analyze and re-analyze the data, work closely as colleagues with their State Health and Agriculture partners, the FDA and industry, both from a trace back perspective as well as in the laboratory to identify, control, and most critically prevent this outbreak of Salmonella saintpaul and future outbreaks of illness.