Personal Injury Law

Say, Do you have Salmonella Saintpaul in my Salsa?

By Bill Marler, Esq.

The CDC says now that we have 887 people infected with Salmonella Saintpaul with the same genetic fingerprint have been identified in 38 states and the District of Columbia.  Two new states, Alabama and South Carolina, report ill persons.  The number of ill persons identified in each state is as follows: Alabama (2 persons), Arkansas (10), Arizona (44), California (8), Colorado (11), Connecticut (4), Florida (1), Georgia (22), Idaho (4), Illinois (91), Indiana (11), Kansas (17), Kentucky (1), Maine (1), Maryland (29), Massachusetts (21), Michigan (6), Minnesota (2), Missouri (12), New Hampshire (3), Nevada (11), New Jersey (6), New Mexico (90), New York (26), North Carolina (5), Ohio (7), Oklahoma (23), Oregon (10), Pennsylvania (8), Rhode Island (3), South Carolina (1), Tennessee (6), Texas (354), Utah (2), Virginia (22), Vermont (2), Washington (4), Wisconsin (6), and the District of Columbia (1).

The produce industry is calling for "investigations" (hmmm, where have they been in the last several years as they have poisoned thousands?) to see why the CDC and FDA may have picked tomatoes instead of Salsa as the vector for all these illnesses.  The USA Today quotes me as saying:

Bill Marler, one of the nation's leading food-safety attorneys, says the FDA can't be faulted for acting in the absence of a "smoking tomato" laced with the salmonella bacteria.

"Should they have waited until they knew exactly what it was? Well, whose side do they want to come down on: the side of public health and kids or the produce industry?" Marler asks.

Full post as published by Marler Blog on July 02, 2008 (boomark / email).