The largest food-borne outbreak of illness on record in the last 10 years may now be linked to cilantro and jalapeño and Serrano peppers, according to federal health officials.
Just more than 1,000 cases in 41 states have been reported in the salmonella outbreak that began in mid-April. About 200 people have been hospitalized due to the illness, Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director, Division of Foodborne, Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases, at the Centers for Disease Control, said Wednesday.
While various peppers have become suspect in an outbreak initially blamed on tomatoes, health officials still warn against consumption of red plum, red Roma and round red tomatoes unless they are from a source identified on the Food and Drug Administration's safe-to-eat list.
"We are clear that jalapeno peppers caused some of the outbreak. It is not clear that they explain all the illnesses," Tauxe said.
At this point, investigators are presuming that both tomatoes and peppers could have caused the illness, which has continued to spread. A number of different foods have been associated with the illness, not always one ethnic food type.
Since the beginning, some who became ill reported consuming fresh salsa, but in not every case did people realize that they had eaten peppers. For that reason, peppers may not have been as commonly reported as tomatoes.
"It wasn't that they were ignored. It wasn't they weren't considered. It's that they were not reported very frequently at the time of the initial interviews," Tauxe said.
Health officials have acknowledged that the case has been complex.
"It's just been a spectrally complicated and prolonged outbreak. I don't have an explanation for it," said David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods for the FDA.
One of the most powerful tools in determining the source of the outbreak lies in clusters of people that report illness the same day or at the same place. But it wasn't until much later in the investigation that clusters began to pop up, offering a lead as to where to look for the source of the outbreak, officials said.
But Manatee County growers have lamented the lagging investigation that has cast a shadow over the industry, costing it close to $500 million. Growers are confident that with such stringent safety standards, the culprit is not tomatoes from Florida.
Investigators, they say, have yet to prove that the outbreak is linked to tomatoes. Of 1,700 samples tested, taken mostly from farms, all have returned negative for salmonella.
Even though it's still possible that investigators may never find the source of the outbreak, they continue to pursue the source, Acheson said. Clearly, the mission is to protect public health, which is why the tomato advisory was issued in the first place, Acheson said.
"I can assure there was good evidence. That's why we went down that road," he said.
E-Mail
Print
@Nyx.CommentBody@