Personal Injury Law

"We know the confusion they are going through"

By Marler Clark LLP

The Centers For Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) added 49 individual cases to the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak today, bringing the total to 756.   Everyone who has come down with the rare salmonella strain did so before June 13th.  The outbreak continues to involve 34 states and the District of Columbia.

Meanwhile the hunt for the source of the bad tomatoes continues.   Its been a week since the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) sent teams to specific tomato fields in Mexico and south Florida.  While there's been nothing new from the  FDA investigation, the Palm Beach Post reported this:

Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson said Thursday he is "99.99 percent" sure that a national salmonella outbreak was not caused by Florida-grown tomatoes, but that more definitive identification of produce origin would help investigators track down where the infection came from.

Bronson traveled Thursday to Washington to meet with David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's associate commissioner for foods, to discuss the labeling issue and others related to the outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul, which began in April.

The meeting included two Florida congressmen: Adam Putnam, R-Bartow, and Allen Boyd, D-Panama City.  Four Florida counties have yet to be cleared.  Florida's only case of Salmonella Saintpaul involves a man who ate a raw tomato while traveling in New York.

"We know the confusion they are going through," Bronson said of the FDA investigation. "The fact that you have repacking going on across the country with Florida tomatoes puts our label on some product that is not 100 percent Florida product."

Bronson said he recommended to the FDA and the congressmen that repacked tomatoes be better identified.

More from the Post here.

Full post as published by Salmonella Blog on June 27, 2008 (boomark / email).