Yet another weird Salmonella outbreak

[Nu Kua]

I say weird because I cannot imagine a tomato factory being close enough to sources of salmonella to have caused such a widespread outbreak of the disease, due to cross contamination. Salmonella, according to this CDC fact sheet, doesn't develop naturally in fruits and veggies- they could only be affected by cross contamination.
Even if it is due to workers not washing their hands after going to the bathroom, how can so many tomatoes become infected? So far it has tainted enough to have infected tomatoes traveling to 9 states.

Remember the fresh greens that were infected a year or two back, from California?
The last I heard on that, they were "looking into the possibility" that it was due to improper organic farming- which doesn't sound right to me.
And unless it escaped me, there never was a solution to that puzzle.

anyway the story
Investigation of Outbreak of Infections Caused by Salmonella Saintpaul


CDC is collaborating with public health officials in several states, the Indian Health Service, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate an ongoing multistate outbreak of human Salmonella serotype Saintpaul infections. An epidemiologic investigation conducted by the New Mexico and Texas Departments of Health and the Indian Health Service using interviews comparing foods eaten by ill and well persons has identified consumption of raw tomatoes as the likely source of the illnesses in New Mexico and Texas. The specific type and source of tomatoes are under investigation; however, preliminary data suggest that large tomatoes, including Roma and red round are the source...
...In addition, approximately 30 persons with Salmonella Saintpaul infection have been reported since late April in residents of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, and Utah. Investigations are underway to determine if consumption of raw tomatoes is also associated with illness in these states.



Question probably for Lycanox- the story goes on to mention that
"Since late April, 40 persons infected with Salmonella Saintpaul with the same genetic fingerprint have been identified in Texas (21 persons) and New Mexico (19 persons)."

Can the Salmonella mutate, like a flu virus?

[lycanox]

Vegetables can get infected with enterobacteriaceae if other animals crap on them.
If the vegetables are then not properly cleansed they can spread the bacteria afterwards towards anything that eats it.
And offcource the workers that don't wash hands can spread the bacteria etc.

Today many vegetables are being processed with machines in vast quantities. If in one of those machines or storage tanks the conditions are right to grow and spread the bacteria, the bacteria will stay there and multiply.
Infecting the entire batch or even worse the machine itself. Which will then spread the bacteria to any batch of tomatoes that are processed with it.

Can the Salmonella mutate, like a flu virus?

Just like all living things, bacteria evolve resulting in various subtypes of Salmonella.
Which are usually screened with serological and DNA checks.
This screening is important because some Salmonella's are more dangerous than others.
Like s. Typhi which causes Typhoid fever.

[Nu Kua]

Just an update-
now found in 16 states.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Salmonella food poisoning first linked to uncooked tomatoes has spread to 16 states, federal health officials said Saturday...

...An additional 50 people have been sickened by the same Salmonella "Saintpaul" infection in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported...

...The source of the tomatoes responsible for the illnesses has not been pinpointed, but health officials in Texas and New Mexico said none of them was grown in those two states...

...The rarity of the Saintpaul strain and the number of illnesses "suggest that implicated tomatoes are distributed throughout the country," she said.

[ryangti]

Amazing i dont eat much fruit and veg as you should seems those around me who do seem to get ill more.

[Fyhre]

I just read an article stating that McDonald's will stop selling sliced tomatoes here in the U.S.. But, never fear! They'll still keep the baby tomatoes in the salads...

McDonald's to toss tomatoes

[Vivitory]

I don't believe anything is completely safe to eat anymore.

[Nu Kua]

Tomato growers scramble after outbreak

Shipments of tomatoes from Mexico have completely stopped. This could be another major blow to their economy, that is for sure.

A few months back they were protesting the end of import protections on their countries corn and bean products due to NAFTA provisions.
Corn and beans are subsistent crops grown by farmers and already many have been driven into poverty by the cheap and plentiful imports, which were expected to increase even more after the end of what little import protections they had going for them.
There is a direct correlation between farmers loosing their income in their homeland and thus immigrating to the United States in order to make money.
Here is an article regarding the protests.

Doesn't look so great for Florida, either.

My tomatoes are growing very slowly! We've had a wet and cool spring.

[Harry61]

Originally Posted by lycanox

Vegetables can get infected with enterobacteriaceae if other animals crap on them.
If the vegetables are then not properly cleansed they can spread the bacteria afterwards towards anything that eats it.
And offcource the workers that don't wash hands can spread the bacteria etc.

Today many vegetables are being processed with machines in vast quantities. If in one of those machines or storage tanks the conditions are right to grow and spread the bacteria, the bacteria will stay there and multiply.
Infecting the entire batch or even worse the machine itself. Which will then spread the bacteria to any batch of tomatoes that are processed with it.


Just like all living things, bacteria evolve resulting in various subtypes of Salmonella.
Which are usually screened with serological and DNA checks.
This screening is important because some Salmonella's are more dangerous than others.
Like s. Typhi which causes Typhoid fever.

Thanks, that is what I was looking for. My spouse and I were discussing why, when we were younger and had hugh gardnes, we never had this problem

Probably because most good farmers know that you can grow faster and heartier vwggies with crap on it, but you do need to remember to wash it before eating it.

Manure is called fertilizer, and you can buy bags of it at Wal-mart, Home Depot etc. We just used to clean our barn out and spread it. There is a trick to that too, you spread it in the winter time, and let nature take its course. Composting, or such.

We never had a problem with the out break of food bourn illnesses when I was young. Two reasons, I agree with Lycanoxx on, one they put crap on it, and two, nobody cares to wash their hands anymore...

[ryangti]

Florida's tomato industry is in "complete collapse" and growers in California and Mexico are having trouble selling their crops as U.S. regulators hunt the source of a salmonella outbreak linked to certain tomato varieties, growers said on Tuesday.

Its all going to hell!
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNe...33595920080610

[DaveyDoes]

Originally Posted by Harry61

Thanks, that is what I was looking for. My spouse and I were discussing why, when we were younger and had hugh gardnes, we never had this problem

Probably because most good farmers know that you can grow faster and heartier vwggies with crap on it, but you do need to remember to wash it before eating it.

Manure is called fertilizer, and you can buy bags of it at Wal-mart, Home Depot etc. We just used to clean our barn out and spread it. There is a trick to that too, you spread it in the winter time, and let nature take its course. Composting, or such.

We never had a problem with the out break of food bourn illnesses when I was young. Two reasons, I agree with Lycanoxx on, one they put crap on it, and two, nobody cares to wash their hands anymore...

This has been a pretty big conversation around our house too. Exactly for the
reasons you mentioned...we cover our garden in a mulch/manure mixture at
the end of each growing season. Veggies come straight from the garden, into
the sink and eaten. We've never been sick the first time from garden grown
things.

I'm just not getting the outbreaks of this, unless it's being done on purpose or
people are just the biggest pigs in the world. At this point, who do you really
blame? Growers? Pickers? Transport? Vendors? It could even be the buyers,
because I'm sure everyone that sits down to their meal in a restaurant isn't
washing their hands. Eating out, people come in from their cars, get seated,
touch everything on their table, scratch, blow their noses and then start
touching all their food when it's served.

On the other hand...

No one can imagine how many times in my life I've sat down on the grass
beside the garden and had a lunch of cucumbers, tomatoes, squash...fresh
from the vine...run under the hose for a minute, peeled with my pocket
knife (which incidentally gets used for EVERYTHING) and never even
suffered the first stomach ache.

It's all very odd

[olddragon]

Grow mine in horse dung, taste great right off the vine. Rinse and bite.
Of course I wash my hands first.

[medicvet]

Frankly, I wonder how much of this is because of irradiated fruit and vegetables, and frankensteinien products that are bred to be a certain way. I also have my suspiciouns about bee colony collapse being possibly caused by this too. I repeat as I have said before: MONSANTO IS THE ANTICHRIST

[Vivitory]

Originally Posted by medicvet

Frankly, I wonder how much of this is because of irradiated fruit and vegetables, and frankensteinien products that are bred to be a certain way. I also have my suspiciouns about bee colony collapse being possibly caused by this too. I repeat as I have said before: MONSANTO IS THE ANTICHRIST

I wouldn't go as far as saying its the anti christ but Monsanto is def something that I don't agree with.

Lately I don't even know if I would even trust all the so called "organic/hormone/non genetically altered" foods.

This salmonella scare really made me think the same thing about genetically altered foods, food sprayed with herbicides, and pesticides.

Maybe its an experiment gone wrong and they are trying to cover it up? I wouldn't totally leave it out of the question.

[lycanox]

'm just not getting the outbreaks of this, unless it's being done on purpose or
people are just the biggest pigs in the world. At this point, who do you really
blame? Growers? Pickers? Transport? Vendors? It could even be the buyers,
because I'm sure everyone that sits down to their meal in a restaurant isn't
washing their hands. Eating out, people come in from their cars, get seated,
touch everything on their table, scratch, blow their noses and then start
touching all their food when it's served.

Bacteria can be spread in millions of ways. And it is impossible to check each tomato for microorganisms.

Whether or not a company is allowed to produce fresh food isn't determined on the amount of bacteria being found each year in the food. But whether or not their HACCP plan is capable of detecting them.

No one can imagine how many times in my life I've sat down on the grass
beside the garden and had a lunch of cucumbers, tomatoes, squash...fresh
from the vine...run under the hose for a minute, peeled with my pocket
knife (which incidentally gets used for EVERYTHING) and never even
suffered the first stomach ache.

It's all very odd

Its a gamble on depending on whether or not you ate something that is contaminated, your immune system is capable of fighting it, and the type of bacteria.

Bacteria in food food are generally present in higher numbers and had more time to metabolize.
Which means they had more time to pee toxic substances like botox in your food.

[olddragon]

My dog pee's on my tomatoe plants every day.

[Harry61]

We just heard on the news that the farmers market here in town is safe. Due to the fact they are grown in a green house under controlled circumstances.

Nice to know local growers will profit over the "commercial" growers.

[DaveyDoes]

Originally Posted by Harry61

We just heard on the news that the farmers market here in town is safe. Due to the fact they are grown in a green house under controlled circumstances.

Nice to know local growers will profit over the "commercial" growers.

They've been saying the same thing here on the news...but, then again, they've
kind of been pushing the local farmers markets lately anyway with rising
prices.

[Nu Kua]

Originally Posted by Davey

...they've kind of been pushing the local farmers markets lately anyway with rising
prices.

This is WONDERFUL news! Yes, promote local! A positive shift of paradigm can come from this.

Just today I was at the UPS store and this guy comes up and hands me a flyer. Turns out, once a month there is a community potluck held at the park, where the theme is that everything brought to share is raised or grown locally!
I didn't even know that!
Anybody can come. The flyer says if you play a musical instrument, to bring it, as in, they are making a celebration of the whole thing.
People coming together, meeting each other, all to promote this.
It's the smartest thing we can do.

"...the country's centralized food processing system is at least partly to blame because produce from one source is distributed all over the country. If just one corner of farmland becomes contaminated, bacteria can spread all over the United States.

"We don't see this disease in India, Africa, China. We only see it in highly technologically advanced countries, and the reason is because of this highly centralized food processing system," said Lee Riley, professor of infectious disease and epidemiology at UC Berkeley.

Which not only proves that getting to know your growers, or becoming growers yourself, makes so much more sense.
Not to mention, having such a centralized production system, that so many depend on, is more vulnerable not only to accidents, but to attack. Thinking darkly, how easy would it be to purposely taint the food supply, or otherwise control it, thereby sending entire populations to their knees?

That quote is from this SFGate article from last year about the spinach scare. According to the article, officials suspected the water supply since Earthbound Farms, the producer of most of their tainted spinach, had its fields fairly close to fields of swine. However, those tests came back negative.

[DaveyDoes]

Originally Posted by lycanox

Bacteria can be spread in millions of ways. And it is impossible to check each tomato for microorganisms.

Whether or not a company is allowed to produce fresh food isn't determined on the amount of bacteria being found each year in the food. But whether or not their HACCP plan is capable of detecting them.

Hmmm, I kind of implied that. There's a whole chain of people responsible
from top to bottom for these contaminations. I have a dairy, we're regulated
by the Department of Health in order to give away (because I don't sell) any
product. I have a 3 inch ring binder detailing each and every step that we're
to take for EVERYTHING. Regular inspections of my processing sheds, testing
of the animals, fields, milk, cheese from them. We test daily and sample on
a regular basis. It's mind boggling everything it takes to make sure that some
thing gets from cow to another person without contamination. BUT, the thing
is...even with stringent steps to assure quality...if the person drinking the
milk became ill...because they had hadn't washed their hands or stored my
milk properly once they had it...it would STILL fall back on me. Which is
what it's doing in this case. Falling directly on the shoulders of the growers,
when, as you said...there are a million ways to contaminate things...and
it's hard to ferret out just where it's happened.

Originally Posted by lycanox

Its a gamble on depending on whether or not you ate something that is contaminated, your immune system is capable of fighting it, and the type of bacteria.

Bacteria in food food are generally present in higher numbers and had more time to metabolize.
Which means they had more time to pee toxic substances like botox in your food.

Well, I'm not certain about anything peeing toxic substances...lol but, it's
understandable that the farther away from the point of origin something
travels, the higher risk there is that something will happen. Likewise, the
more hands it passes though, with the case of tomatoes.

I agree that with Harry, OD and myself...no matter what were growing our
gardens in...all those other hands and chances for exposure is gone just
by picking out of the garden and rinsing things off. We accomplish first hand
what apparently hundreds of people can't seem to do with commercially
produced foods. Which is the part I referred to "not understanding"...how
the breakdown is happening. With strict policy for handling these things
you should "in theory" have less chance of contamination...not more.
Because it should be either prevented or detected earlier in the process
and stopped at that point.

[Nu Kua]

CDC investigates possible non-tomato salmonella sources

Federal investigators retraced their steps Monday as suspicions mount that fresh unprocessed tomatoes aren't necessarily causing the salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds across the USA.

Three weeks after the Food and Drug Administration warned consumers to avoid certain types of tomatoes linked to the salmonella outbreak, people are still falling ill, says Robert Tauxe with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The latest numbers as of Monday afternoon were 851 cases, some of whom fell ill as recently as June 20, says Tauxe, deputy director of the CDC's division of foodborne diseases...
...At a news conference Friday, representatives of the FDA and the CDC were more forceful in saying that they aren't sure tainted tomatoes caused the outbreak of salmonella saintpaul, a fairly rare strain. Previous statements had been more vague....

[olddragon]

It was spinach last year, perhaps they should start checking lettuce.
Who would eat a salad or a burger with just tomatoes.

[DaveyDoes]

Originally Posted by olddragon

It was spinach last year, perhaps they should start checking lettuce.
Who would eat a salad or a burger with just tomatoes.

Maybe it's not the foods at all...maybe it's a bunch of Typhoid Mary's
or maybe something more nefarious. Who the hell would know anyway?

Seriously, what would be as devastating as a major outbreak of some
killer disease if not outbreaks of a LOT of little ones? To erode at the
confidence in the farming, food shipping and distributors all at once.
To raise prices. To further stir up distrust in the government.


"Federal investigators retraced their steps Monday as suspicions mount that fresh unprocessed tomatoes aren't necessarily causing the salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds across the USA."

This pisses me off to no end because, it's already cost farmers millions of
dollars and it could have not been them the whole time.

[olddragon]

Very true Davey.

[nicdeedoop]

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/200...almonella.html

Salmonella outbreak sickens 4000 Danes

[Nu Kua]

I am posting this here although it doesn't seem to be related outright, and maybe it isn't at all, but it really caught my attention and it might tie in with a prediction I made somewhere else.
Anyway maybe it's just the conspiracy mind movie getting wound up and ready to film again, but there is something about this news that leaves me kind of unsettled.
Could it just be the timing?
Maybe its silly but at least we'll have the story here for future reference if needed.


Center for medical intelligence expanding

FREDERICK, Md. (AP) - A military intelligence unit that had tracked medical threats to troops worldwide is expanding its mission to include civilians at home.

The National Center for Medical Intelligence at Fort Detrick had previously been known as the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center and focused on protecting military personnel. The center will now be the "premier producer and coordinator of all-source medical intelligence," the Defense Intelligence Agency announced...

...The center will now also look at "what particular diseases and other health threats and issues might be imported or might cause illness or injury to U.S. citizen and forces here in the homeland."

The center's role has expanded since it was established and it now works with the intelligence community, the Department of Homeland Security, the White House, the State Department, coalition and foreign partners and other domestic non-defense agencies. The DIA said such partnerships allow the center to focus on a broader range of foreign medical threats including diseases such as pandemic flu and avian flu...

Note, another article does mention this is for Federal employees.

..."We write estimated predictive analyses each week in regards to our assessment of risk of a pandemic and then policy makers use our work to make the appropriate decisions," says Air Force Col. Tony Rizzo. "We are adding significant partners from the intelligence community and non-intelligence partners so we may provide force protection intelligence for forces deployed worldwide and forces deployed nationally. And this is not just uniformed forces, but all federal employees who deploy."...

Incidentally, did anybody post about the beef recall last week? (e-coli)