Update below
I would like to say that I am not in favor of being careless with food, of people getting sick, etc. etc. Around here, we are quite careful with our stuff. In the past we HAVE been careless with enticing green and red and brown salsas sitting in little bowls on tables in Mexican restaurants, including Mexican restaurants in the US of A (The Land of the Free as my friend Susan is fond of calling it) in spite of the excellent advice of my daughter-in-law NOT to eat salsas sitting on tables for long periods of time. We're better about that now after more than one unpleasant aftermath following gorging on some delicious stuff far more irresistible than potato chips and onion dip.
But normal common sense in handling your own food is all that's needed in the case of this salmonella scare. There's something truly nutty going on with this saintpaul salmonella business. Now it's the poor jalapeño pepper that has been dragged to the lynching post. If it were mad cow disease, it would be different: a fatal disease you can't detect in your food nor treat once you've consumed its bearers. But this isn't mad cow disease, it is salmonella! It's a common food-borne disease! People don't even go to the doctor for it most of the time! Sometimes they don't even know they have it!
AND You CAN protect against it. It's pretty easy. Here are the precautions that the CDC recommends in its most recent post on salmonella saintpaul:
Consumers everywhere are advised to follow the general food safety guidelines below:
* Refrigerate within 2 hours or discard cut, peeled, or cooked produce items.
* Avoid purchasing bruised or damaged produce items, and discard any that appear spoiled.
* Thoroughly wash all produce items under running water.
* Keep produce items that will be consumed raw separate from raw meats, raw seafood, and raw produce items.
* Wash cutting boards, dishes, utensils, and counter tops with hot water and soap when switching between types of food products.
If you follow these rules, you won't get salmonella from any of the food so treated even if there was salmonella on it to begin with.
I
Furthermore, there's little to indicate that salmonella saintpaul is more of a culprit at present than other salmonellas, let alone other food-borne diseases. Here, for instance, is a clip from an article posted at the Williamson County and Cities Health District site in Texas. Notice how sensible it is. Notice in the charts how more people have been found to have non-saintpaul salmonella than saintpaul salmonella.
Although there is no question that
Williamson County is experiencing an outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul, it is
important to note that reporting for all Salmonella usually improves during
outbreaks due to the heightened awareness produced by media coverage and the
public health response. With increased publicity and awareness, individuals are
more likely to visit a health care provider and health care providers may be
more likely to order diagnostic laboratory testing that allows the specific
bacteria to be identified.
|
Gender
of 2008 Williamson County |
||
|
Gender |
%
Cases |
%
Cases |
|
Female |
38.7%
(12/31) |
55.6%
(5/9) |
|
Male |
61.3%
(19/31) |
44.4%
(4/9) |
|
Age
of 2008 Williamson County Salmonellosis Cases (as of 7/15/08) |
||
|
Age
Range |
%
Cases |
%
Cases |
|
<1 |
12.9%
(4/31) |
11.1%
(1/9) |
|
1
- 4 |
22.6%
(7/31) |
0%
(0/9) |
|
5
- 14 |
6.5%
(2/31) |
0%
(0/9) |
|
15
- 24 |
3.2%
(1/31) |
11.1%
(1/9) |
|
25
- 39 |
16.1%
(5/31) |
33.3%
(3/9) |
|
40-64 |
35.5%
(11/31) |
33.3%
(3/9) |
|
>64 |
3.2%
(1/31) |
11.1%
(1/9) |
According to US news sources and the CDC, they've found ONE sample of jalapeño pepper with this strain in a McAllen, TX distribution center, and now poor ole Mexico is left holding the bag once again. So instead of telling people "...they should avoid raw jalapeño peppers and foods that contain them if they were grown, harvested, or packed in Mexico" why don't they just tell them to follow normal food safety guidelines in the use of jalapeño peppers?
AND they are still telling people to avoid serrano peppers from Mexico.
It's no wonder Mexican producers and packers are becoming paranoid. They see the issue as one in which the US is trying to circumvent NAFTA to favor US products over Mexican products in the US, especially since this is the season for NEW Mexican chiles, abundant competitors to Mexican chiles.
Here's a translation of most of an article in yesterday's La Jornada, written by Matilda Pérez U, describing current Mexican reactions.
[Telling US consumers to avoid jalapeños] "'is a dirty FDA stategy to protect US farmers,' says Heladio Ramírez. 'Its a game of the sick free market, this campaign against the Mexican chile jalapeño.'
"The National Caucus of Rural Legislators maintained that the FDA's warning to consumers to avoid raw Mexican jalapeño chiles is a 'dirty campaign to protect US growers.' This 'game' is causing millions of pesos of damage to Mexican producers...
"The FDA maintained today that all the samples that they had taken in various places -- they didn't specify either the number of samples nor the places--originated in Mexico, and for that reason they were now going to determine if the salmonella came from a particular region or farm.
NOTE: ¡In reports available in the US, it was only reported that it was only one sample found in one warehouse in McAllen, TX! And it may have been only one pepper! And how come they don't know where that one sample came from?
"The Mexican government is hoping that agricultural health authorities of the United States will be able to present as soon as possible scientific evidence to show that their public pronouncements conform to the letter and spirit of international trade treaties.
"Mexican production of jalapeño chiles approaches 720 thousand tons. Its value is estimated at $200 million dollars and the continuation of this commercial uncertainty, said César Fragoso, a non-governmental representative of the chile industry, will damage the economy of 40 thousand producers in Chihuahua,San Lois Potosí, Querétaro, Guanajuato and Michoacán.
"He was adamant that US authorities are using the public health issue to stop exportation of Mexican chiles [to the US] in order to favor the producers of Las Cruces, New Mexico, who are now harvesting their chiles.
"Heladio Ramírez López, former director of the National Confederation of Farmworkers, commented that the attitude of the US 'isn't new; the US makes the rules, distorts them, and then walks all over them of course in its own interests; they play a very aggravating game. They´re now doing the same thing with the jalapeño chile that they did with tomatoes.'
"The Mexican government, the President of the Senate's Commission on Rural Development added, has to raise the volume and show that we are a serious, responsible country, that our producers work very diligently to export products that are not harmful and are of good quality.
"What really angers him, he added, is that the government hasn't done anything to stop the US from imposing infranqueables barriers to Mexican products on the basis of suspicions alone, something they've done also with strawberries, avocadoes and other products.
"The director of Senasica (the national agricultural health and quality service), Enrique Sánchez Cruz, said that they might have the scientific results of the tests on jalapeño chiles done in some of the northern zones this Wednesday."
Other articles have pointed out that US recommendations to hold Mexican produce for ten days to insure they are healthy means the products will rot.
Below you will see a chart from the Centers for Disease Control which shows the extent of the total outbreak of salmonella saintpaul by state.
If you look at it even briefly, you'll see that the biggest outbreaks have been in Texas and in New Mexico. Even they aren't huge. None of them are. But could this outbreak (smaller in at least one county than of other forms of salmonella) be due to the New Mexican chiles from Las Cruces? Could it be? Has anyone tested them? I remember those chiles being so abundant in San Antonio at this time of year that they were tumbling out of bins in supermarkets, were offered roasted for sale on streets, etc. etc.
An interesting note: the HEB supermarket chain (still my favorite supermarkets) which has hundreds of stores throughout Texas and northern Mexico reported that it was pulling its jalapeños with regret because while it didn't seem it could sell them at this point, they had never received a report of anyone getting salmonella from eating Mexican jalapeños or tomatoes bought in an HEB.
Okay. To sum up:
1. We should all take sensible precautions to clean our produce and avoid using damaged produce.
2. WE can control whether or not we ingest salmonella in our own homes.
2. Salmonella is NOT mad cow disease.
4. Different strains of salmonella are very common in the US.
5. There is no evidence that the US should be crushing the Mexican chile and tomato industries to track down this particular outbreak.
Incidentally, the CDC is tracking an outbreak of e. coli in hamburger. It offers good home meat-handling safety procedures. A particular lot of ground beef from Krogers has been recalled. It was recalled AFTER the disease was traced to that particular lot. In the meantime, all ground beef remained in stores.
AND in March, there was an outbreak of salmonella traced to canteloupe. In this case, ONE Honduran company was identified as the source of the problem.
Both of these outbreaks were considerably smaller. Why was the response so much more precise and seemingly so much more effective?
Update:
After reading this, Jim suggested that I brushed off that indeed salmonella could be serious for vulnerable populations. Indeed it can. And I would think that avoiding raw products in restaurants as well as food like salsas left for unknown periods of time on tables would be a good rule to follow for anyone at risk. Because of our agroindustrial practices, food-borne illnesses are likely to spread in surprising ways, and are likely to crop up with some frequency, whether they be salmonella of one sort or another or something different.