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...much damage can a few rotten tomatoes really do? The tomato-linked salmonella outbreak announced by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on June 3 has claimed 228 victims in 23 states over 58 days (and counting). It has put 25 people in the hospital and may have had a role in hastening the death of a cancer patient. And then there's the flurry of panic as many of the tomatoes that American consumers take for granted every day suddenly disappear - from McDonald's hamburgers; from the salsa at Chipotle Mexican Grill; from Burger King, Taco Bell and Sonic...
...Because the FDA's tomato-recall recommendation is so specific - including only three types, grown in certain regions during a certain time - and because many national chains pulled their tomato stock within days of the announcement, most of the infected samples have likely been removed. But the outbreak remains ongoing; its source has not yet been determined, and the government is investigating new cases every day. It may be a few more weeks before the delicious staple fruit is given the all-clear...
...Saintpaul strand are so rare that the report caught the CDC's attention. When Texas and a few other states reported cases of people being infected by bacteria with the same "genetic fingerprint," a multistate search for Salmonella Saintpaul was launched. While the CDC tracked reported illnesses, the FDA interviewed victims to find out what they had eaten (and where). The common answer was tomatoes...
...list of high-risk foods that are prone to infection. But unlike the bagged spinach from the 2006 E. Coli scare, the tomatoes don't come with a traceable bar code. "When you're dealing with tomatoes, it is much, much more complex," explains Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's associate commissioner for foods. The FDA's great tomato hunt has an ever-expanding list of suspects. A salmonella victim can point to the supermarket (or restaurant) that sold the offending fruit, but that store probably sources its tomatoes from several suppliers, each of which uses several distributors - and distributors...
...Each set of questions just multiplies into a fan of information that has to be sorted through to understand where the links cross over," says Acheson. Although the FDA has managed to rule out some regions - northern Florida is safe because its tomatoes weren't ready for harvest at the time of the outbreak - it will be some time until the true source is found. "We're not quite there yet," says Acheson, "but we're getting very close." But Dr. Ian Williams, chief of the CDC's OutbreakNet team, warns that the source may never be found...