Opinion: Jalapenos interrupted

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So after hundreds of millions of dollars lost in the tomato industry, now it’s jalapeno peppers that are being jerked off the market shelves as a possible source of the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak that’s sickened more than 1,200 people. What’s going on?

This time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has the bug — which is to say, its investigators found the actual strain of the bacterium causing all the grief in jalapenos that come from a Mexican farm, via a Texas distributor. It’s unclear so far whether the problem is the farm or the Texas operation, but at least this is progress. In the red, round tomato case, no one was ever able to pin a germ on an actual tomato. The tomato warning was issued because so many afflicted people remembered eating them. There might also have been a bit of questioning bias in there. Tomatoes have been prone to salmonella contamination, enough for the FDA to have started a ‘Tomato Safety Initiative’ last year. Ever notice how investigators tend to find what they were looking for in the first place?

In any case, clearly not that many people remembered eating jalapenos or salsa — or we’re not talking about one outbreak, but rather a series of outbreaks that look like one. Though the FDA has given tomatoes the green light, it’s not ruling out that the possibility of contaminated tomatoes earlier on.

So why, a colleague asked me, did the FDA do all that damage to the tomato industry without a single poison tomato in hand? Take into account the alternative and then decide. The FDA hears that most victims remember eating tomatoes. It sits on the information for weeks while tomato after tomato is tested — and while hundreds more are sickened. Then let’s say it did find a bad tomato. What would the public say?

Given what we know now, which was the better solution? What should the FDA have done?