Salmonella outbreak tied to tomatoes reaches 17 states

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Federal officials today hunted for the source of a 17-state salmonella outbreak linked to three types of raw tomatoes, while the list of supermarkets and restaurants yanking those varieties from shelves and menus grew.

McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Burger King, Kroger, Outback Steakhouse, Winn-Dixie and Taco Bell were among the companies that voluntarily withdrew red plum, red Roma or round red tomatoes unless they were grown in certain states and countries.

In addition, officials at the Los Angeles Unified School District — the nation's second largest — said Monday they have "indefinitely suspended" serving uncooked tomatoes.

The FDA is investigating the source of the outbreak, agency spokeswoman Kimberly Rawlings said. "We are working hard and fast on this one and hope to have something as quickly as possible," Rawlings said Monday.

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You can add my place of employment to the list restaurants altering their menus in response to this latest tainted food scandal. It's an Italian restaurant. No fresh tomatoes at an Italian restaurant. Big drag. I mean, we are substituting grape tomatoes where we can, but no Margherita pizza, no fresh tomato bruschetta...of course, we don't have any Italians working there, either, but you get the point.

And I call it a scandal because it probably is one.

That is, even though the FDA hasn't got it all figured out yet, I think it's safe to make a couple of predictions about what they will find. First, if these tainted tomatoes were grown in the United States, they most likely came from some kind of gigantic agri-business farming operation. In his book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser relates in great detail how the corporatization of the American food industry has created circumstances that make what would have been only a small outbreak in the past massive and widespread today. Schlosser deals primarily with the E. coli poisonings of ground beef in the early 90s, but the same principle applies to chickens, eggs, and produce--sometimes, as with the recent tainted spinach scandal, produce growers can do everything correctly and safely, only to find that nearby operations dealing with live animals have tainted local water. In short, the centralization of food creation, coupled with corporate fiscal short-sightedness has made our food much less safe than it has been in the past.

Second, Republicans have gutted the regulatory agencies that are supposed to make sure this doesn't happen. When they had the Congress for twelve years, they continually cut funding, so these agencies for years have had neither the resources nor the staff to inspect our food and the companies that produce it. Now that they've had the White House for nearly eight years, they've restaffed these agencies with industry insiders who see regulation and safety as something that only inhibits profit. That is, many of the people running these agencies are now using them to do the exact opposite of what they were established to do in the first place.

In the end, these tainted food outbreaks we seem to experience every other year are the result of almost two decades of psychotic right-wing delusions about how the "free market" will solve all problems. I mean, I guess they have a point: consumers are now rejecting the bad product, tomatoes which may be infected with salmonella, which is, I suppose, a "market correction."

But I sure would hate to be one of those people who got really fucking sick or died from E. coli or whatever it is this week fucking up our food supply. Caveat emptor is only for Barbarians and savages, which is exactly how our corporate capitalist masters see us.

Bunch of fucking assholes.

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