Restaurant Chain Linked To Tomato Related Salmonella Cases

But guess what.  The FDA isn't going to tell you which one it is.

Fair use excerpt LA Times report "Restaurant chain linked to 9 cases of tomato-borne salmonella":

Nine people sickened by a salmonella outbreak linked to fresh tomatoes ate at two restaurants from the same chain, federal officials confirmed Friday.

The chain's name and restaurant location are confidential, said David Acheson, the associate commissioner for foods at the Food and Drug Administration, during a conference call with reporters. A spokesman for the agency also declined to provide the time frame for the cases -- or say whether the restaurants were in the same state.

Same old, same old.  Even when they know, the Bush administration won't inform the public on what they need to know to keep themselves safe. 
Remember the cat food crisis.  We didn't make much of a fuss at that time, though the FDA also required us to wait for companies to voluntarily out themselves and announce their own recalls.  The spinach crisis didn't get us excited.  An AP report "Why it takes so long to trace a bad tomato " notes that it was solved more quickly than the tomato crisis.  

The AP report says this is because the Spinach came in bags that were often still sitting in refrigerators, and those bags had bar codes on them, where as most raw uncanned tomatoes are sold individually.

Later this year, fresh, unbagged produce will have to have country labels on boxes and apparently signs for the shopper.   This year we might have a fine target since (because of seasons) the suspect tomatoes are supposed to have come from Florida or Mexico. 

The Produce Marketing Association, an industry group, earlier this year began pushing growers and suppliers to take a voluntary first step to make fresh produce more traceable in case of outbreaks: Putting codes on the boxes they're shipped in would help authorities track the different stops they make from farm to packer to supplier to store or restaurant.

Of course that's only true if the resellers keep track of the bar codes.

Caroline Smith DeWaal says it won't be done until required by the government. Excerpt same AP report:  

Her Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the FDA almost two years ago to require all growers to have a written food-safety plan that included how they trace their produce. The FDA hasn't ruled on that petition...

The FDA just asked Congress for an extra $125 million for food safety programs next year, and better traceback — along with more inspections and other contamination-prevention steps — are among Acheson's plans for spending it.

$125 m seems rather puny.   

Down at the end of the AP report, the round up is Dr. Acheson and the head of the Produce Managers Association nagging that we can't expect that labeling of country origins will help track and stop these outbreaks better. 

It seems to me though, that we can if we get down to an enforced tracking code system.

 Hopefully, by this time next year, there will be a change to a Democratic administration that won't be afraid to step on the toes of produce resellers when people are getting sick and who won't be hesitant to require tracking of produce.  In the meantime, if you have land, you may be able to grow your own tomatoes.  They aren't very difficult.

A NY Times report on the conference call led me to cross search on Chicago and tomatoes and bingo,  Bloomberg reports in "Nine Salmonella Victims Ate at One Chain, U.S. Says" that all those 9 cases were in the Windy City and it was a local chain restaurant, but still no one is saying which one. 

For me, the important point is that it is not a national chain, but that doesn't help other restaurant chains local to the area. People who must dine out can choose a non-chain or a national chain. Then again raw tomatoes are off the menu everywhere anyway.  And given the wide spread nature of the infections, Chicago isn't the only place this happened.

tags: tomato scare  fda  agriculture  tracking codes  produce  salmonella  

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