2008 United States Salmonellosis Outbreak - Criticism of The FDA

Criticism of The FDA

James Prevor, Editor of Produce Business, has criticized the FDA for maintaining a list of areas where crops "have not been associated with the outbreak," because if tomatoes have in fact been contaminated elsewhere along the supply line, the FDA's list of safe farm areas would be inappropriate and misleading to consumers. Charles H. Bronson, Agriculture Commissioner of the State of Florida, also indicated that repacking could be responsible for Salmonella contamination. Bronson said that there is a "99.99 percent" chance that the Florida tomato farms are not the source of the Salmonella outbreak.

Prevor has also criticized the FDA for refusing to disclose data on whether subjects generally recalled eating suspected foods from restaurants or from retail stores: "Retail and restaurants often have completely different products with a completely different supply chain." For example, mature green winter tomatoes, which are primarily distributed to the foodservice market, are dominated by Florida producers. Vine ripe winter tomatoes, which are distributed to both the foodservice and retail markets, usually come from Mexican producers. "All this information is not confidential," Prevor writes concerning data on the origins of purchase. "There is no reason not to release it." At least three Mexican restaurants (two Adobo Grills and one Los Tres Amigos) in Illinois have been publicly identified by the Chicago Department of Public Health and the Madison County Health Department as responsible for clusters of the outbreak, despite the FDA's nondisclosure stance. According to unnamed sources close to the investigation, most illness clusters in the outbreak involve Mexican restaurants.

Earlier in the investigation, some produce industry insiders expressed doubt that fresh produce is to blame for the outbreak. They pointed to the absence of Salmonella on all of the tested produce samples to date, as well as divergent results from produce tracebacks. They also said that the extended time frame of new sicknesses made it unlikely that either raw tomatoes or fresh jalapeños, the government's two main suspects, could be solely responsible. Some have looked to cross-contamination at restaurants as a more probable cause of the outbreak. Contaminated foods such as raw chicken could have spread the Salmonella to fresh salsa at restaurants. Customers would not have become ill from contaminated chicken once it was cooked, but they might have become ill from the raw produce that had contacted raw chicken.

Others suggested that processed foods such as canned tomatoes and canned jalapeños might have been responsible for the outbreak. Health officials generally do not consider processed foods high-risk suspects in food outbreaks, as the canning and bottling processes are supposed to kill any bacteria. Nevertheless, the FDA and the CDC were surprised in 2007 by outbreaks from Salmonella contamination in pasteurized peanut butter and from Clostridium botulinum contamination in improperly pasteurized canned chili. Will Steele, President and CEO of Frontera Produce, said that "the outbreak is probably related to processed goods and looking in the wrong closets."

The FDA's recommendation that consumers stop eating any fresh jalapeños, regardless of their origin, has elicited more disapproval from the produce industry. Criticism of the FDA's decision comes on the grounds that there was only a solitary positive sample among numerous negative samples both at the distribution facility and at many other farms and facilities. Additionally, Agricola Zaragoza is a small distributor that imports from a known source in Mexico and distributes peppers to limited parts of the country. Four days after making the recommendation not to eat any fresh jalapeños, the FDA announced that peppers grown in the United States are indeed safe to eat.