Mid-Michigan Dining

…and surprise!  The cause of the Salmonella outbreak in the US is tainted water in an irrigation system on a Mexican farm. 

“We have a smoking gun, it appears,” said Dr. Lonnie King, who directs the center for foodborne illnesses at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Acheson said the farm is in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. Previously, the FDA had traced a contaminated jalapeno pepper to a farm in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Both farms shipped through a packing facility in Nuevo Leon, raising the possibility that contamination could have occurred there.

Needless to say, tomato farmer’s are a little pissed.

“For weeks and weeks, investigators were on the trail of the wrong product,” Thomas Stenzel, president of the United Fresh Produce Assn., told the House Agriculture Committee.

But federal officials insisted that tomatoes still cannot be ruled out and that it is quite possible the outbreak was caused by several different kinds of contaminated produce.

“I don’t think we can say that (tomatoes) were needlessly dumped,” Acheson told reporters after the hearing. “The early part of the investigation clearly implicated tomatoes.”

Yeah, but not American grown tomatoes.  One of the farms where salmonella was found also grew tomatoes.  So now, American tomato growers are out millions of dollars because of what happened on a Mexican farm. 

If we just grew our own food.  Made our own toys.  Sewed our own flags.  We wouldn’t have these problems.  Very rarely do you hear of a problem like this with an American made product.  They’re always from China or Mexico.  What does that tell you?