Thread: Mexican farmers mad at FDA

June 16, 2008, 11:09PM
Mexican farmers mad at FDA
No salmonella has been found in tomatoes south of the border, officials there say


By MARLA DICKERSON
Los Angeles Times


MEXICO CITY — Mexican farmers are mad enough to throw, well, rotten tomatoes at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is focusing heavily on Mexico as a potential source of the fruit that has sickened hundreds of people in the United States with salmonella.

Mexican tomatoes are putrefying in warehouses south of the border. Producers say they're losing millions of dollars in export sales even though U.S. health officials haven't discovered the pathogen in any of the Mexican samples they've tested to date.

"This situation is terrible," said Antonio Ruiz, general manager of Agricola Caborita, a company in the western state of Sinaloa that sells tomatoes to the American market. "We have hundreds of canceled orders. ... We're worried and angry because we know that our product isn't to blame, yet we're paying the consequences."

The FDA advised U.S. consumers a little more than a week ago to avoid eating raw red plum, red Roma or round red tomatoes. Mexico is a major supplier of those varieties to the U.S. market, exporting about 800,000 tons to its neighbor in 2007, according to Mexico's agriculture secretariat.

The FDA said last week that it was concentrating its investigation on Mexico and South Florida, which provided the bulk of America's tomatoes during April, when the first U.S. salmonella cases appeared.

U.S. health officials said at a news conference Monday that they're continuing to focus on a cluster of nine salmonella cases from one geographic region of the U.S. that they believe are linked to the same type of tomato. The FDA would not say where that outbreak occurred or whether the victims contracted the illness from the same venue. Nor could they say how long it might take to track the suspect tomatoes to their source.

In the meantime, they advised consumers to eat only tomatoes listed on the FDA's safe list.

Many Mexicans view the U.S. action as unfair and potentially crippling to their $1 billion tomato export industry. The nation's health authorities so far have reported no similar outbreak of salmonella among the Mexican public.

Still, Mexican food products have been linked to other high-profile incidents of illness in the United States. Mexican green onions were the source for a 2003 outbreak of hepatitis A at the Chi-Chi's restaurant chain that resulted in at least four deaths and more than 600 illnesses in 13 states. The chain was hit with hundreds of lawsuits and ceased operating in 2004.

The FDA temporarily banned imports of Mexican cantaloupe in 2002 after it concluded that the melons were the source of four salmonella outbreaks that killed two people and hospitalized at least 18 others in the United States.






http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/5841267.html

LOL ...THEY ARE MAD. TOO BAD. MEXICO IS MAD AT US...BOO HOO. LOL. FDA IS NOT GOING TO CLEAR MEXICAN TOMATOES TILL THEY ARE SURE THEY ARE NOT INFECTED. ALSO EVEN IF THE TOMATOES WERE NOT INFECTED WHEN THEY LEFT MEXICO, THEY COULD HAVE BEEN INFECTED DURING THE TRANSPORTATION PROCESS. IF MEXICAN TRUCKS ARE TRANSPORTING CHICKENS AND THEN VEGGIES.....THERE IS THE PROBLEM.

LOL....THE TOMATOES ARE ROTTING.

HEY I WONDER HOW THE AMERICAN TRAITOR FARMERS ARE DOING THESE DAYS. BET THEY WISH THEY STAYED IN GOOD OLE USA.

Good one redpony.

Chickens, then tomatoes.

Yep ... now that there makes perfect sense, probably too much for FDA to think of it though.