Friday, July 18, 2008

To-may-to, To-mah-to: They're Safe Again!

Yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration said that tomatoes are again safe to eat, just a few weeks after they were blamed for a salmonella outbreak in the United States and Canada.

But keep your guard up, because raw jalepeno and serrano peppers are now linked to the outbreak.

Actually, the source of the outbreak still isn't known - and 20 to 30 reports of the illness are coming in per day - but the FDA said the epidemic is "waning." The FDA hasn't determined whether tomatoes were a source of the outbreak, but it has determined that tomatoes currently in fields and stores are safe.

Salmonella Saintpaul - a rare form of the salmonella bacteria - has infected more than 1,190 people in 42 states, the District of Columbia and Canada since April, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 370 of those people became ill on or after June 1, the CDC said.

Read the CNN.com article on the FDA lifting of the ban on tomatoes here.

Read the plezWorld post about tomatoes and the salmonella outbreak here.


plez sez: let's get this straight: tomatoes are NOW safe to eat, BUT we're not sure if they were ever the culprits in the salmonella outbreak. we're not even sure if the jalepenos are the culprits. but we do know that a shitload (pardon the expression) of people got poisoned and spent an inordinant amount of time on the crapper because of it...

just wondering out loud: next time i order that burger, should i tell them to hold the tomatoes?




1 comment:

endangered coffee said...

My wife is making salsa today.

Either way, looks like I'm screwed.