2008 United States Salmonellosis Outbreak - Source of The Contamination

Source of The Contamination

As of July 31, 2008, the CDC has sent 39 people into the field to work with other health officials in investigating the outbreak. The exact sources of the contaminated food are not yet known. The time frame of the outbreak had led the FDA to suspect that a source or sources of the outbreak may be among tomato farms producing winter crops in either of the following areas:

• Parts of Mexico, such as the State of Sinaloa, which exports over 300 million pounds of winter tomatoes to the U.S. via the Arizona border. Tomatoes from Sinaloa enter the U.S. through the hardest hit region of the southwest, which has suffered over half of the total reported cases in the outbreak. By contrast, tomatoes from Baja California, which have been listed by the FDA as "not associated with the outbreak," are exported to the relatively unaffected California.
• The southern and east-central regions of Florida. Southern and central Florida produce the majority of domestically consumed winter tomatoes, though only two cases of food poisoning have actually been reported in Florida - and one of those involved a Florida man who had eaten a raw tomato in New York.

As of July 31, the latest reported illness onset occurred on July 12, and the latest estimated illness onset occurred on July 25. Illness onsets well into July suggest that fresh winter tomatoes are not the only source of the outbreak. In response to the continuing progression of illness onset dates, the CDC has proposed that a contaminated farm might have switched from tomato production to jalapeño production in the middle of the outbreak, causing crops of both types of foods to become contaminated. Jalapeño peppers, a food strongly suspected in the outbreak by the FDA, are primarily grown throughout Mexico, Texas, and New Mexico.