Every day I'm a little bit happier that I planted a garden this spring.
I'm just glad I've never really liked salsa, and tend to get my tomatoes processed to within an inch of their lives.
Oy.
Fucking.
Vey.
Glad I made that Navajo chili LAST week when I could still get Poblanos from Puebla at my local market.
Next stop for the wingnuts: blaming Mexico and illegal immigrants for this. Why not ban tortillas next? Once we all go back to eating heavily-processed, deep-fried food and other All-American Vittles the world will go back to normal, right? *snark*
GLAD I'M A CSA MEMBER!
OK, I guess that's it.
Time to get the FDA some black helicopters, and let's transfer some ATF and DEA paramilitary personnel, who've had family harmed by food-borne illnesses, to FDA as staff.
After all, insofar as voluntary compliance goes, you'll get more with a kind word and a gun, than a kind word alone. 
Mostly so we can have some "Oh shit - that's not ICE, it's FDA!!!" moments.
Corporate lobbyists at the top of the FDA have really worked out well for us.
It is not Cilantro. it is dirty ,contaminated containers or truck interiors.
Buy Canadian! Seriously, this is truly appalling, especially at the time of year when fresh produce is at it's finest. Hope all of you are who don't have gardens are being very, very careful of what you eat.
PS Clara may be right.
Is there some reason those tomatoes couldn't be cooked and eaten? Salmonella is destroyed by heat.
Thank goodness for the local farmshare......... and the back garden.
kegan...FDA allready ahs it..worked for a pharma for a while...got raded once (bad batch of kidndys) the probelm is that they are understaffed adn the top level of managment (political appointies) are incompitant
the last batch of tomatoes i bought were at the cardenas market. they place norteño music, like "los tigres del norte" and have a dedication to local farmers. their sign on the tomato bin said
Mexico tomato
Not sick.
most of the regulatory agencies have been totally gutted by bushco. it hasn't been about anything but propping up agribusiness and industrial growers at the expense of farmers.
the thing that they've created is a monolithic, concentrated at the top, system that would have warmed the cockles of old line stalinists.
before, a grain plague of rust or other rot, an outbreak of milk fever, or a contamination or natural blow to a harvest or crop had local implications, which the unorganized, shifting constantly, yet vibrant system could adjust and adapt through. now, if there's a dirty spinach field in the san juaquin the entire industry and crop is brought down.
big business doesn't want anything to do with competition, they want monopoly. we're paying the price as we go with this.
I think Clara nailed it. The contamination is being introduced at a common point in the distribution chain.
I betcha it's coming from the dirty fuckin' hippies and their parsley, rosemary and thyme. Or maybe joo joo beans.
Minstrel Hussain Boy: its startign to become clear..im a dope for not seeign this earlyer.....this isn't an accident...this isn't incompitant managment at the FDA. managemnt is acheving their goal, we just didn't have the goal right....bush has successfull eroded the populaces trust in regulatory agencies.
Let's play cui bono with this thing for a bit. The likely outcome of this fiasco will be a new paperwork regulations for fresh produce, likely extensive. And that would be a gift to big agribusiness, because it would be much easier (read: cheaper) for them to meet those requirement than it would be for small farmers or processor to do so. Now, if they wrote the regulations to effectively exempt the denizens of our local farmer's markets that would be one thing, but that is absolutely not how it works in DC.
Funny thing is I've been buying nice heirloom tomatoes at the Pike Place Market and haven't had a problem. I'll be buying local tomatoes if they ever come in this year (sadly a cold spring and summer is messing with the local crops this year).
Industrial produce is where the danger is. You know those plastic wrapped tomatoes that are hard as baseballs and don't taste like anything? Buying local, or buying from a vendor who knows their supply chain almost completely eliminates any danger.
Has anyone noticed that the foods they are checking are "Mexican"? I never heard of cilantro until I started trying to find out what made a certain salsa taste so good. Seems to me the greatest threat from salmonella comes from mishandling chicken and meat. I think the chicken processors dip the bloody and shitty carcasses in a vat of water to wash of the nastiness. Basically each chicken gets dipped in the bathwater of the previous dead chickens. Tasty, huh? Why aren't they checking the meat situation?
They've destroyed the tomato industry with this crap. How much more will they do?
i will still eat peppers whats life with out a little risk
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