Although Tennessee has been ruled out as a source of salmonella contamination in tomatoes, the outbreak has spread into parts of the state. The Tennessee Department of Health identified three cases of the illness linked to tomatoes Thursday—two in Williamson county, the other in Rutherford county.
The salmonella outbreak now stretches across 23 states. Florida, Georgia, Missouri, New York, Tennessee, and Vermont all have new cases, according to the CDC.
Although the Food and Drug Administration has yet to pinpoint an exact source. they have issued a list of areas NOT associated with the outbreak. They are also continuing to block shipments of tomatoes from Mexico.
According to the AP report, approximately 80 percent of the US tomato supply originates from Mexico. Consequently, Mexican growers and government officials are in a snit over how this might affect the industy. The citizens there, however, do not seem overly concerned about the scare and appreciate lower prices as growers try to move their soon-to-be rotting supply.
Of course, Mexicans are accustomed to lower standards for food safety. (According to the report, the number of Salmonella cases reported by Mexican health officials are three times higher than those reported in the US.)
Meanwhile, Americans are wringing their hands and speaking outraged tones, “Peter Pan, spinach, cantaloupes and now `maters! How could our country allow this to happen? Why have thou forsaken us, oh FDA! Wait – it must be a conspiracy perpetrated by George Bush! The end is nigh upon US!”
Nah. Not necessarily. This is probably just a side-effect of globalization – that’s all.
See, most tomatoes grown in the US are used for processing, so they don’t have to be pretty, unbruised or terribly fresh. They’re just going to cook`em into ketchup anyway. Field-grown, ready-to-eat crops, on the other hand, need to have the appearance of quality and freshness and are a bit riskier and far less profitable. (Not to mention, the government has gotten so persnickety about American growers importing slave labor for harvest.)
To remedy this problem, whatever we Americans can’t turn a dime or dollar on, we import. We let other countries grow things for us. We don’t give a damn how they grow it, where they grow it or if they water it with poop. We don’t even mind if they pay their people .10 a week to harvest it. We import it anyway because it’s cheaper than growing it ourselves… and we distribute it to many different places for many different things. Consequently, if something goes wrong, the source is tricky to track down.
That’s just how it is.
Ideally this “attack of the killer tomatoes” will inspire a new trend to buy local or grow it yourself. (Seriously, if you don’t know the where your tomatoes came from and don’t want to risk spending 72 hours or so, feeling like a Mack Truck rolled through your intestines, toss it. Buy some from Grainger Co.)
If not, other options are:
(1) Avoid all fruits, vegetables and other imported foods. In fact, to be on the safe side, just don’t eat at all. Take Flinstone Vitamins instead.
(2) Eat `maters and use the Demarcationville possibly-preventative experimental tonic and treatment for warding off salmonella, poison ivy, bug bites, other ailments or evil. I ate tomatoes at the Mexican restaurant earlier this week. I’ve got no clue where they came from. I only remembered the tomato scare after I’d eaten several. Since it was too late to worry about it then, I figured I might as well finish. Now, in order to pickle any bacteria that might have been on the tomatoes, I’m taking moderate doses of beer.
PLEASE NOTE: This treatment has not been proven effective by the FDA and this is not intended to be medical advice or take the place of any medical advice given by your doctor. This treatment is not recommended to anyone – at all, especially if you’re pregnant and lactating, diabetic, have poor eyesight or all of the above. If this treatment fails, has side-effects or you fall asleep while reading about this treatment and bump your head on the desk, it is not my problem. This is just what you get for taking advice from a beer-drinking blogger. You really should have known better .
That having been said: so far so good.
I know you’re sort of joking, but I think there is a lot of truth to your home remedy there. It is no coincidence at all that East Tennessee has been ruled to be the l east healthy region in the US and also has the strongest Temperance movement.
1 Timothy 5:23 advises believers “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.”
Of course all modern biblical scholars point out that 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus are not included in Marcion’s 140AD canon, nor are there any quotations of them before Ireaneus in 170AD and therefore they are not authentic. Problem is, if you throw them out because of the drinking advice, where do you stop throwing things out?
“approximately 80 percent of the US tomato supply originates from Mexico”
This is a good point. People are so darned upset over the possibility that Mexicans have been stealing our highly desirable $5 a day/no benefits backbreaking tomato picking stoop labor jobs. But having driven the Mexicans out, it turns out that Americans weren’t really lined up to take those jobs? Who could have predicted this turn of events?
So now, the whole tomato production line has been shipped out of the country. No jobs packing, no american families making ends meet growing tomatoes, it’s all gone to Mexico, even the truck deliveries are there since under NAFTA Mexican trucks that would never be licensed as safe in the US are driving tomatoes cross country, free from inspection. Another victory for hysteria over foreign laborers on our farms – we have made sure that everyone who works on a farm is truly a citizen of the country where the farm is located.