US: FDA adds up to 100 labs to help trace salmonella outbreak

02.jul.08
USA Today
Elizabeth Weise

barfblog

The Food and Drug Administration activated its Food Emergency Response Network on
Tuesday, adding as many as 100 laboratories to its efforts to trace the source of
the salmonella outbreak that has sickened more than 800 since April.
The extra labs are needed because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) over the weekend expanded its investigation of the outbreak originally blamed
on contaminated tomatoes. The federal agencies are now collecting samples of foods
typically consumed with tomatoes.
That doesn't mean that tomatoes are off the suspect list, cautioned David Acheson,
the FDA's associate commissioner for foods. "The tomato trail is still hot, it's a
question of whether other items are getting hotter," he said.
The emergency response network was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks to provide expanded testing facilities in the event of a biological
terrorist attack. It was activated in 2006 for the E. coli outbreak in bagged
spinach and in 2007 for the contamination of pet foods with the chemical melamine.
Robert Tauxe, a CDC deputy director, would not list items being studied, saying that
would be "irresponsible." Other food-safety experts, including Doug Powell at Kansas
State University in Manhattan, Kan., have wondered whether jalapeños, green onions,
cilantro or white onions might be implicated.
Many of the cases are in the Southwest, and more than half are in Texas, New Mexico
and Arizona. "But it's also true that there continue to be cases reported from a
number of different states, so it's very hard to see a more focused geographic
pattern," Tauxe said.
Acheson told reporters that although raw tomatoes can be eaten "chopped up in a
salad," they are also frequently used in "other dishes - pico de gallo, salsas and
various other things."
Acheson was cited as wondering whether pushing the food industry to move to
computerized record keeping might speed investigations in the future, stating, "In a
digital age should we still be using paper and pencil to try to figure these things
out It certainly seems illogical at this point that we don't have a more expeditious
way to deal with traceability."
Jean Halloran of Consumers Union called on Congress to mandate traceability of
fruits and vegetables back to their source, stating, "The FDA should not have to
spend its modest resources trying to track down the source of food contamination. If
FedEx can keep track of all its packages moving around the country, the produce
industry should be able to do the same."