It is absolutely outrageous that we are 90 days into the salmonella outbreak and the FDA and CDC still cannot determine the source of contamination. Currently, over 1200 cases of salmonella have been reported, hundreds have been hospitalized, while the outbreak has affected 42 states, including Washington, DC and even Canada. The salmonella outbreak continues to spread, with nearly 30 cases a day, because we do not have a national, comprehensive food traceability system that would quickly track our foods from the field to the fork. An effective traceback system would allow us to quickly identify the source of the contamination, while protecting our producers, growers, and distributers whose industries are being devastated. Now the FDA is saying that tomatoes are safe, but only because they have a short shelf life. We still don’t know the source of the contamination, and that is inexcusable.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 11:49 am and is filed under Politics .