Yet another weird Salmonella outbreak

[Nu Kua]

I thought I posted an update that they were looking into jalapenos?
Anyway, look where this is going:

FDA: Avoid jalapenos from Mexico, not U.S.

Only jalapeno peppers grown in Mexico seem to be implicated in the nationwide salmonella outbreak, the government announced Friday in clearing the U.S. crop.

The Food and Drug Administration urged consumers to avoid raw Mexican jalapenos and the serrano peppers often confused with them, or dishes made with them such as fresh salsa.

But the big question is how those who love hot peppers would know where the chiles came from, especially in restaurant food.

"You're going to have to ask the person you're buying it from," said Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's food safety chief, who is advising restaurants and grocery stores to know their suppliers and pass that information to customers.

The big break in an outbreak that now has sickened nearly 1,300 people came on Monday, when FDA announced it had found the same strain of salmonella responsible for the outbreak on a single Mexican-grown jalapeno in a south Texas produce warehouse.

[Nu Kua]

This from USA Today

Mexico criticizes U.S. salmonella findings

Mexican agriculture officials said Thursday that U.S. colleagues hunting for the source of a salmonella outbreak are rushing to a conclusion about finding the strain at a Mexican pepper farm.

The salmonella sample that one U.S. official called "a smoking gun" was taken from a water tank that had not been used for more than two months to irrigate crops, said the director of Mexico's Farm Food Quality Service, Enrique Sanchez...

...On Wednesday, Dr. David Acheson, the food safety chief for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, described the finding of the salmonella strain at a farm in the northern state of Nuevo Leon as a key breakthrough in the case.

"We have a smoking gun, it appears," said Dr. Lonnie King, who directs the center for food-borne illnesses at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Sanchez said the U.S. officials "totally lacked scientific evidence" to make those statements and said they had broken a confidentiality agreement by announcing findings before their investigation is complete.

"We're eating this same produce in Mexico and we haven't had any problems," Sanchez said.

He suggested the FDA officials had confused the source of the samples because the tainted water was found on a farm in the Tamaulipas state municipality of Hidalgo — not in Nuevo Leon as the FDA reported...