I shit you not, folks. There have been zero tomato samples found contaminated by salmonella. The initial mainstream media account relied wholly on a statistical analysis of people interviewed who had become ill. The thing which was found to be most in common was that they had eaten pico de gallo at a Mexican Restaurant. However samples taken of tomatoes, jalapenos, cilantro from the restaurants cited (in Texas and New Mexico) were all found to be clean.
Let me repeat: Zero Tomato Samples found with Salmonella!!!
Tomato industry groups have criticized the use of statistical analysis and say that government health officials should wait until they find a contaminated product before taking serious actions such as recalls. But government officials say that delaying a warning could cause serious harm to public health, because more people could become sick without an early alert.
More after the jump:
These "government officials" should be fired! I would recommend to any tomato growers who have lost money due to this fiasco to sue the living shit out of the FDA! Furthermore, I've grown quite tired of the parrots in the MSM sounding the alarm on bullshit like this. These A**holes also need to go!
In Florida alone tomato industry losses have been estimated at $500 million.
Meantime, tomato farmers, packers and shippers fear it could take months to rebuild the nation's $1.3 billion market for fresh tomatoes. Brim (president of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association) said some growers may not plant their usual second tomato crop of the season if the mystery isn't solved by the end of July.
"It's been a real eye-opener how the government and the media can destroy a market," he said. "A real eye-opener."
http://www.ajc.com/...
This latest runaway food panic is almost a parody of unlikely cause-and-effect. Man eats food in Mexican restaurant, gets food poisoning from tomato-based pico de gallo, shuts down continental tomato markets. If everyone who ever got food poisoning in a Mexican restaurant triggered a related industry crisis -- I think I got mine from a guacamole dish -- half the food industry would have been closed a decade ago.
Enhancing the media-led distortion is the fact that the original story is wrong: The man allegedly killed by tomato salmonella after eating at a Houston, Texas, restaurant -- 67-year-old Raul Rivera -- actually did not die from the tomato he ate. Kathy Barton, a Houston health official, said Mr. Rivera's official cause of death is cancer. The Texas health department reports it has no deaths from salmonella poisoning.
http://www.nationalpost.com/...
UPDATE: There has been an outbreak of ~4,000 cases of Salmonella in Denmark!! It has been suspected to be due to contaminated Danish meat!
Also, in Denmark Danish health officials are continuing to hunt for the cause of a salmonella outbreak that may have sickened as many as 4,000 people.
...Kare Moelbak of the Ministry of Health said investigators suspect a Danish food product, most likely a meat product, caused the outbreak. Similar outbreaks have not been reported among neighbouring countries.
http://www.cbc.ca/...