- "Repacking tomatoes" a process the FDA says
was a "surprise"...
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- Here we go again. The FDA was unaware of repacking,
i.e. mixing tomatoes from different farms. Some tomatoes from the US are
shipped to Mexico, mixed with Mexican tomatoes and labeled "product
of US."
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- My guess is we will never learn the source of the tomato
outbreak and numbers will continue to climb throughout the summer, until
local farms have their tomatoes only sold at local farm stands.
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- Hopefully, many new home gardeners are going to put in
a few plots of tomatoes next season.
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- Tomato 'Repacking' Surprises Salmonella Hunters
- By Sabin Russell
- San Francisco Chronicle
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- A widespread practice of mixing tomatoes from different
farms at produce distribution centers has made it impossible so far to
trace the source of a nationwide salmonella outbreak that has sickened
hundreds, federal regulators said Friday [27 Jun 2008].
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- Dr. David Acheson, an associate commissioner for the
Food and Drug Administration, acknowledged that the extent of the practice,
known as "repacking," was a surprise to agency investigators,
and that it vastly complicates the process of tracing the path of tomatoes
from farm to store. "We are learning that this is a very common practice,"
said Acheson. "Possibly 90 percent of tomatoes are repacked."
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- The agency has found, for example, that tomatoes from
Mexico have been shipped to Florida, repacked and sold with tomatoes from
Florida. Similarly, tomatoes from the USA are sent to Mexico, where they
are repacked and shipped to the USA as a product of the USA.
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- None of these juggled tomatoes has yet been linked to
the salmonella outbreak, but the practice illustrates one reason why FDA
disease detectives have had no success in tracking the bug back to the
farms in Mexico or southern Florida, where they think it may have originated.
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- Distributors frequently repack tomatoes to meet the needs
of commercial customers, such as restaurant chains, that demand that each
box contain vegetables of similar size and ripeness. Not only does repacking
make it harder to figure out where a bad tomato may have been grown, it
raises the prospect that consumers who think they are buying produce from
one of the many designated "safe" states may be getting tomatoes
comingled with produce from other regions.
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- Attempts to find sources of vegetable contamination are
notoriously difficult, because the product is perishable, tends to be consumed
quickly, and seldom has the kind of labeling found in processed foods.
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- "Disease investigators are puzzled that salmonella
cases continue to be recorded long after the harvests have been completed
in south Florida and Mexico where the contamination was thought to take
place. We have no evidence that the outbreak is over," said Dr. Patricia
Griffin, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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- She also acknowledged that, for every reported case,
there can be as many as 30 people who recover without a visit to the doctor
or whose illnesses go unreported.
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- The ongoing nature of the outbreak has also caused disease
investigators to consider that some other food product or process may be
responsible for the salmonella poisoning. Fresh tomatoes grown this spring
in South Florida and Jalisco, Coahuila and Sinaloa, Mexico, remain the
primary focus of the investigation, although tests of 1700 samples so far
have turned up no trace of the bug.
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- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/28/BA9611GFS7.DTL
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- Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD
- Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural Economics
- Univ of West Indies
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- Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message
board at:
- http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php
- Also my new website:
- http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/
- Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
- Go with God and in Good Health
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