Report: Tainted Peppers Didn't Alarm FDA

Months Prior To Salmonella Outbreak, Feds Rejected Dozens Of Mexican Chiles; No Further Action Taken

(AP)  Federal inspectors at U.S. border crossings repeatedly turned back filthy, disease-ridden shipments of peppers from Mexico in the months before a salmonella outbreak that sickened 1,400 people was finally traced to Mexican chilies.

Yet no larger action was taken. Food and Drug Administration officials insisted as recently as last week that they were surprised by the outbreak because Mexican peppers had not been spotted as a problem before.

But an Associated Press analysis of FDA records found that peppers and chilies were consistently the top Mexican crop rejected by border inspectors for the last year.

Since January alone, 88 shipments of fresh and dried chilies were turned away. Ten percent were contaminated with salmonella. In the last year, 8 percent of the 158 intercepted shipments of fresh and dried chilies had salmonella.

On Friday, Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's food safety chief, told reporters peppers were not a cause for concern before they were implicated in the salmonella outbreak.

"We have not typically seen problems with peppers," Acheson said. "Our import sampling is typically focused on areas where we know we've got problems or we've seen problems in the past, which is why we're now increasing our sampling for peppers."

On Monday, the FDA said Acheson's comment was in relation to outbreaks or illness associated with Mexican peppers, not the rejection of pepper shipments at the borders. Calls to the FDA seeking elaboration were not immediately returned.

Still, food-safety advocates question why the agency did not pay more attention to the peppers being stopped at the border and why it took the nation's largest foodborne illness outbreak for the agency to ratchet up its screening of companies known for shipping dirty chilies.

"If the fact that they were showing up on problem lists for a year doesn't make them high-risk, I don't know what does," said Ami Gadhia, policy counsel with Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. "If it's across the board, then that's a systemic problem that FDA needs to be able to nimbly respond to."

The agency initially suspected that fresh tomatoes had caused the outbreak. Then officials determined in mid-July that jalapenos could also be sickening people and eventually traced implicated pepper shipments all the way back to two farms in Mexico.

The agency doesn't keep count of what percentage of the nearly 491,200 metric tons of Mexican peppers imported last year were turned away at the U.S. border. In general, the federal government inspects less than 1 percent of all foreign food entering the country.

According to the Department of Agriculture, 84 percent of all fresh peppers eaten in the U.S. come from Mexico.

In the last year, the agency's data shows that dozens of cases were turned back due to filth, illegal pesticides and in one case, something poisonous.

Bob Buchanan, a former senior science adviser at FDA, said part of the problem may be that the agency sets its priorities for the food it considers to be high-risk years in advance.

Dried peppers and other imported spices were considered sufficiently risky to be mentioned on a 2006 FDA manual instructing inspectors on which high-risk foods deserved a more careful check.

The agency has long considered salmonella to be a risk in dried chilies, since foreign spice traders often leave peppers to dry in the sun where they're vulnerable to contamination from birds and other animals, Buchanan said.

Inspectors might have looked over the odd box of fresh Mexican chilies, but no one paid raw peppers much attention since they were not mentioned as a high-risk crop, he said.

"Somebody could have picked up a box and looked at peppers if they wanted to, but I'm not sure that would have been a high priority," Buchanan said. "It would require a big leap to think that salmonella in dried peppers could be related to problems in fresh chilies."

Since the salmonella outbreak began in April, 1,423 people have fallen ill and the produce industry has lost more than $200 million as consumers have shied away from buying fresh produce.

Federal investigators are now focusing their probe on fresh hot peppers from Mexico - jalapenos and serranos - but still suspect that tainted tomatoes were initially involved.

This month, the agency put a dozen Mexican growers or distributors on its "import alert" list for tougher border screening.

On Friday, Acheson said the agency had stepped up testing of certain Mexican produce and uncovered more cases of salmonella contamination - just not the same strain that caused this particular outbreak - in jalapenos, basil and cilantro.

In July, six separate shipments of fresh jalapenos and serranos were stopped after inspectors found they were contaminated with salmonella, FDA data shows.

One crate detained on July 29 came from Agricola Zaragoza, a Mexican packinghouse that handled produce from two farms where chilies linked to the outbreak were traced.

"If so many of the peppers we eat in the U.S. come in from Mexico, you'd think we would want to pay more attention," said Mike Doyle, director of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety, which works with industry to improve growing and packing practices. "Something isn't working."

[bhappy2-2]

RI Bishop Wants US To Halt Mass Immigration Raids

I want to halt Mass ILLEGAL ALIEN INVASION.

[bhappy2-2]

Thats right! Worry about the peppers but let 12-35 million ILLEGAL ALIEN INVADERS just wander in and set up housekeeping. After all, they are only here to do the jobs Americans can''t get. And none of the ILLEGAL ALIEN INVADERS have any diseases. I mean, it''s not like they are coming over here and dropping anchor babies or anything like that!

[maba7]

What is a non-christian food? Does this mean the food wasn''t baptized? Maybe the cow didn''t accept Jesus as a personal saviour?
How can food be Christian or non-Christian? It''s food, for pity sakes.
Now if you are a practicing cannibal, your food might not be Christian, but I certainly wouldn''t brag about it.

[maba7]

What is a non-christian food? Does this mean the food wasn''t baptized? Maybe the cow didn''t accept Jesus as a personal saviour?
How can food be Christian or non-Christian? It''s food, for pity sakes.
Now if you are a practicing cannibal, your food might not be Christian, but I certainly wouldn''t brag about it.

[gordon.couger]

The House and Senate say where most of the USDA funds go. They have given them less money [when adjusted for inflation] every every year for a very long time.

We have less food borne illness than any country in the world with the possible exception of Australia.

For what they have to spend the USDA does very well.
Considering the few that get sick in the US from food how many more inspectors will it take to fix the best system in the world?

The USDA spends a lot on prevention such a eradicating Tuberculosis & Bruclusisis, requiring that milk and juices be pasteurized and setting standards for food handiling and inspection that educate as well a punish food handlers.

If food is grown in the dirt outdoors it will have what ever bacteria is in the soil and water around the plant.

If you want cheap fresh food out of season it has to be imported. This outbreak is a case of a search for the causative bug that went wrong. It is the first one to fail like this in a very long time. Most of them go pretty fast.

The information gathered from this infestation will give the USDA, CDC and FDA a map of salmonella strains from all over the USA and Mexico making the next outbreak much easier to pinpoint.

If you think we need more inspectors you have to convince congress to pay the bill for the people to do it.

GC

[gordon.couger]

The House and Senate say where most of the USDA funds go. They have given them less money [when adjusted for inflation] every every year for a very long time.

We have less food borne illness than any country in the world with the possible exception of Australia.

For what they have to spend the USDA does very well.
Considering the few that get sick in the US from food how many more inspectors will it take to fix the best system in the world?

The USDA spends a lot on prevention such a eradicating Tuberculosis & Bruclusisis, requiring that milk and juices be pasteurized and setting standards for food handiling and inspection that educate as well a punish food handlers.

If food is grown in the dirt outdoors it will have what ever bacteria is in the soil and water around the plant.

If you want cheap fresh food out of season it has to be imported. This outbreak is a case of a search for the causative bug that went wrong. It is the first one to fail like this in a very long time. Most of them go pretty fast.

The information gathered from this infestation will give the USDA, CDC and FDA a map of salmonella strains from all over the USA and Mexico making the next outbreak much easier to pinpoint.

If you think we need more inspectors you have to convince congress to pay the bill for the people to do it.

GC

[missingamerica]

What DO they do at the FDA?

Posted by scottyusa at 04:15 PM : Aug 19, 2008

Well, duh.

Whatever keeps them "on message" in this Administration''s eyes...just like the EPA does, the climate scientists at NASA and NOAA, and on and on...

Else, they must polish their resumes and move on...

[pastdue1]

Imported produce and imported products have killed and sickened more, at least a comparable number of Americans as terrorists have (if you don''t count those soldiers killed in Iraq) . Why do we not have a "War on Imports?" Of course, then Homeland Security would be in charge and things could only get worse.

[scottyusa]

"If so many of the peppers we eat in the U.S. come in from Mexico, you''d think we would want to pay more attention," said Mike Doyle, director of the University of Georgia''s Center for Food Safety, which works with industry to improve growing and packing practices. "Something isn''t working."

Indeed. Seems like no one is in charge. Wouldn''t you think that the FDA would have a central location where this type of data, especially border rejections, is kept and analyzed at least weekly. What DO they do at the FDA?

[sharednotion]

I don''t think that the government should sound alarm bells every time any kind of unacceptable is encountered and stopped at the border; there shouldn''t be a formal press conference called for every minor occurence. But, why not a Web site that anyone can log onto, to allow us to keep generally informed about these things? Yes, SOME individuals might overreact to every new thing that would appear on the federal Web site, but most of would not.

[omnibus66]

As an arm of the Administration, the FDA reflects the Republican mandate, which is corporate profit first. It matters not if the food from Mexico is safe, or if the toothpaste from China has poison in it, as long as the rich get richer.

Mexican crops are grown using chemicals that are outlawed in this country, and are routinely processed under unsanitary conditions.

Current law provides that imported food be labeled with the country of origin, but the Bush Administration has blocked that law from being enforced. As a result, it is impossible to tell where our foods come from.

[sistatee-2009]

After the Mexicans wipe their butts on peppers and tomatoes, I hope they wash their hands.

[foxmulder33]

A lot more of our fresh fruits and vegetables are grown and imported from Mexico, including the Christian ones. I expect the FDA now recognizes the need for better scrutiny.

[aggiekat2004]

MCVet-1, bame Bush, blame Bush. Thats all you liberals know how to do!

Posted by gop_forever at 09:38 AM : Aug 19, 2008
-----------

No, GOP_forever...the government is broken and susceptible to people who worship the almighty dollar at the expense of their constituents.

And funny...a lot of them just happen to be from the GOP. The Democrats don''t have a corner on the market of corruption.

[bmadeline-2009]

ANOTHER example of hiring cronies instead of competent people. Good job Brownie!

[lochlan-2009]

Yet no larger action was taken. Food and Drug Administration officials insisted as recently as last week that they were surprised by the outbreak because Mexican peppers had not been spotted as a problem before.

But an Associated Press analysis of FDA records found that peppers and chilies were consistently the top Mexican crop rejected by border inspectors for the last year."

Sure looks like the government is going to get its ***** sued off again (tax payers) the punitive damges alone will make some law firm quite comfortable.


It''s about time our government representatives start doing serious time for negligence. This shat is getting to be every day.

[credibility2]

Let''s permanently cancel the out of control habit of non-US food products, fresh or otherwise, from being allowed into the country. Mexicans, especially, are filthy when it comes to their growing, handling and processing habits for food items. This isn''t the first time we''ve had this type of problem and until trade is curtailed, it will continue, placing in peril US citizens; even if it''s one individual, that''s one too many. Buy local and seasonal folks. Know your food origin sources.

[slim1h2o]

It`s the GOP way...

Posted by Nancy_Naive at 09:34 AM : Aug 19, 2008

Yes,,they are a bunch of sellouts. Of course, to the highest bidder.

This time, apparently, it was the Mexicans, and their illegals.

[habu99-2009]

"In general, the federal government inspects less than 1 percent of all foreign food entering the country."

Add the woefully small number of meat inspectors within this country and it''s really a wonder more don''t get sick and die from a variety of parasites and bacteria. Our food inspection overall in this country has never been what it should be, mostly because those who import potentially dangerous food, or those who produce it domestically, always throw their money around to lobby against food inspection.

But the FDA in Bush the Lesser''s Washington has reached new lows. The FDA in this administration is yet another example of Junior not giving one *** about the welfare of the people, but only of the wealthy few who contribute to GOP campaigns. Look the other way isn''t a sane policy, it''s not even a policy at all.

The continued enrichment of the very few at the expense of everyone (and everything) else is the only "policy" in place. The Republican Party''s "moral values" are all green with numbers on them. Money is the only god they truly worship, money for them (lots of it) and nobody else. What swine.

[smurfcrusher]

Born Again?

Poor Barbara. The second time must have been rough.