Blaming the Messenger for Salmonella Outbreak

There's no question that the people who run the fresh-produce business are deeply concerned about events like the recent salmonella outbreak.

Or at least, most of them are. "Maybe," said Brent Beckman, the sales and marketing manager of G.O. Fresh of Minneapolis, "this may not be such a big issue."

Mr. Beckman spoke from the audience during a panel discussion of the outbreak at the Produce Marketing Association's Foodservice Conference and Exposition on Saturday in Monterey, Ca.

He compared the outbreak to the number of deaths and injuries caused by car accidents, and wondered why the auto industry doesn't get such scrutiny.

There's no question that car accidents kill a lot more people in the United States than food-borne illness does (at least, so far). The recent outbreak, which has sickened at least 1,284 people and probably many more, and has killed two or three people (depending on which reports you believe) is nothing compared to the carnage caused every year on the nation's highways. But it's not as if something faulty in the manufacturing process of cars causes those accidents.

Mr. Beckman did perhaps have a small point when he said that maybe salmonella outbreaks aren't actually increasing in either number or severity. Maybe the detection and reporting of them has simply improved.

Maybe, but it almost seems beside the point, as most of the produce marketers and government officials, both on the panel and in the audience, seemed to believe. Responding to Mr. Beckman's not-such-a-big-deal comment, Sharri McGarry, a foodborne outbreak coordinator for the Food and Drug Administration, said what many others were no doubt thinking: "I think if that was my family member [who was sickened or killed by eating jalapeño peppers], I'd be pretty darned upset."

Still, there did seem to be a bit of a kill-the messenger attitude on the part of some of the people on the panel. "The positive sides of these stories" don't get told, said Scott Horsfall, CEO of the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, which was formed in the wake of a previous disease outbreak to help prevent future ones.

I half expected him to add, "what about all the people who haven't been killed or injured by eating a taco?"

And Ed Beckman (no relation to Brent, I assume), president of California Tomato Farmers, a trade group, said too much of the coverage of the outbreak consisted of "sound bites" from "the consumer press."

Again, none of this is to say that most of these people don't take the problem seriously. After all, it's their business that suffers when an outbreak occurs. And in Mr. Beckman's industry's case, suffers for no reason: tomato sales plummeted after the government reported that tomatoes were the likely cause. They weren't. Now they're saying â€" a bit more confidently â€" that jalapeño peppers are the source of the disease, probably those from Mexico (though the Mexican government has strenuously objected, of course, saying there's "no proof").

Aside from these asides, most of the discussion centered on what industry and government can do to prevent future outbreaks, or at least get to the bottom of them faster. More on that in future posts.