FDA: Salmonella Found in Jalapeno

Via chicagotribune.com -

WASHINGTON - Call it the smoking jalapeno. After nearly two months of mystery, the Food and Drug Administration has finally identified a piece of produce—a jalapeno pepper—that is contaminated with the same strain of salmonella that has sickened more than 1,250 people in 43 states, the District of Columbia and Canada.

The bad pepper was grown in Mexico and found at a packing company in McAllen, Texas, a few miles from the Mexican border.

It's the first piece of produce the agency has found that carries Salmonella Saintpaul, a rare strain of the food-borne bacteria. The hunt for the salmonella proved so frustrating that Monday's announcement was characterized by Dr. David Acheson, the associate commissioner for foods, as "a significant break in the salmonella investigation."

Acheson announced that the FDA was now warning people not to eat fresh jalapeno peppers. That precaution, which replicates an earlier and much-criticized FDA warning on tomatoes that was issued and then lifted, is certain to anger the produce industry.

Peppers are produced throughout the United States and Mexico, and the warning will mean lost sales for farmers and produce dealers. They have criticized the FDA for failing to quickly determine the source of the salmonella contamination.

The latest discovery was made after federal authorities plucked a pepper from Agricola Zaragoza Inc., a three-employee McAllen produce packing company.

The pepper came from a Mexican farm, but Acheson said there is no evidence that it was contaminated there. Investigators from the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must now trace the pepper's path to Agricola Zaragoza to find a source of contamination.

"While this one sample doesn't yet give us the whole story," Acheson said, "this genetic match is a very important break in the case because it enables us to focus our investigation on the production chain, which will ultimately allow us to hopefully pinpoint the source of the contamination."

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Hopefully next time, the FDA can nail it down before people are sick in 86% of our states.