SURPRISE, SURPRISE! IT AIN'T TOMATERS!! HYUK-HYUK!!!

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THE STRAIGHT(?) POOP FROM THE FDA RUBES

AFTER THREE MONTHS OF POISONINGS NATIONWIDE, FEDS PIN IT ALL ON ONE SMALL TEXAS PEPPER-PACKER

YOU TUBE

"Viva Gorditas"

Or, Maybe The Food & Drug Administration Doesn't Wash It's Own Hands After Using The Toilet

My own personal suspicion is that the outbreak could have been caused by incompetent Federal food inspectors. They are the only link between the many victims. They are the only person, place or thing common to poisonings in over thirty States. They are the only traceable factor over the entire period of three months.

The only way to verify this is to slaughter the entire herd of inspectors, and analyze their carcasses for contamination. It may seem cruel, but so is nature. We have an epidemic to stop here, before it kills another industry... and some Mexican-food-eaters (who, to be fair, have accepted a certain amount of risk in eating jalapenas in the first place). Taco Bell must be saved. Won't you help that poor little dog?

Wait. Maybe it was the dog! He is a known Communist!

GUARDIAN ONLINE
"Tomatoes back on menu after 'not guilty' in salmonella outbreak"

' America's tomato industry has begun the process of recovering up to $200m (£100m) from the US government in lost revenues caused by the fruit being falsely blamed for a major salmonella outbreak. On Thursday, after seven weeks under investigation, tomatoes were cleared and the US watchdog, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), shifted suspicion to hot peppers and coriander. All three are ingredients in salsa. The bad news for American consumers is that after a near two-month investigation, the FDA still has no idea where, why or how the outbreak, which has stricken more than 1,200 people in more than 40 states, started. Indications that a Mexican processing plant might be to blame are being mentioned but there has been no confirmation. '

CHICAGO TRIBUNE
"FDA: Salmonella found in jalapeno"

' The latest discovery was made after federal authorities plucked a pepper from Agricola Zaragoza Inc., a three-employee McAllen produce packing company. Tomatoes initially were named as the suspect, and Acheson said they still haven't been totally absolved even though the FDA last week said consumers could again safely eat them. He also said it isn't yet clear whether tomatoes were also handled by Agricola Zaragoza. A woman who answered the company's phone said the general manager, who could discuss the FDA investigation, was not available. The company has recalled the jalapeno peppers it distributed after June 30 because of the discovery of salmonella. The company's small size left one food safety expert skeptical that it could be a sole source of the salmonella problem. "It would be something different if this were a big distribution place," said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union. "But they only have three people there and $600,000 in estimated annual sales. So this can't be it." Still, having even one piece of the puzzle to work on is a breakthrough. The FDA and CDC have been pressured by an election-year Congress to solve the salmonella mystery, which Acheson characterized as one of the most complex contamination cases he has experienced. '

MISSISSIPPI CLARION-LEDGER
"Do you practice these guidelines to prevent salmonella infection?"

' Frequent hand washing is critical to prevent the spread of salmonella when preparing or serving food. Experts recommend the use of several different cutting boards so that raw meats and juices do not come in contact with vegetables or fruits during meal preparation. The cutting board or container used to hold raw meats should not be used again for cooked meats. If you marinate raw meats before cooking, never baste the meat with marinade it was soaked in. Wash all utensils and knives with hot, soapy water before moving to the next food item. Use disposable paper towels and disinfecting cleanser instead of a sponge for kitchen cleaning. Refrigerate or freeze cooked foods within an hour or two, and reheat leftovers to 165 degrees before eating. '

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ARE YOU GONNA EAT THAT? TOMATO SURPRISE UPDATE

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TWELVE WEEKS LATER, FDA STILL DOESN'T KNOW WHAT'S POISONING AMERICANS

THEY'RE NOT EVEN SURE IT'S TOMATOES


YOUTUBE
"Attack of the Killer Tomatoes"
OK, it's not funny any more. OK, maybe a little. BWAHAHHAHAHA!!!!!!





Could It Be . . . Bacon? . . . Or Lettuce?

Shit, maybe it's mayo. These assholes, entrusted with protecting our national food supply in the midst of a "War On Terror," haven't a fucking clue. THREE months of poisonings, no ideas.

Remember the Anthrax Scare? Never caught that guy, either. The G just had to pay one of their own former employees $5.825 million for wrongly, not outright accusing, or officially charging, just harassing him and leaking to the media that he MIGHT be the Anthrax Guy, which he wasn't. Good at PR? Nah. Kinda TERRIBLE at it, eh? Not much bloody good at anything, these Republicans.

The "Tomato Industry" . . . (Sigh. Remember Iron and Steel and Electronics and REAL industries?) . . . who are responsible for mixing up tomatoes from all over the nation and the world without keeping track of which came from where, making it impossible to trace contaminations . . . are freaking out over the millions and millions of dollars they are losing due to the Guv's slow and uncertain "progress." They know that, as in the Great Spinach Poisoning Scare of last year, and the cantalopes before that, and the canned orangutan soup before that, many veggie-lovers will never eat their stuff ever again. And that number is growing each day that this mystery remains unsolved.

Think they'll sue if the FDA decides it was B or L instead of T? Ah, it's only money. Your money. And your health.

Nice to think, as you sit down to a good healthy salad, that there might be actual shit, crap, doo-doo, number 2, feces, poo-poo, dung, poop or manure mixed in there, eh? Oh, well, the hamburgers are poison now, too. Great time to be dieting, if you can find anything to eat that isn't fattening. Or poison. I'm not hungry any more. Want my BLT-Burger? Uuuuurrrralphphph!!!!


MSNBC
"U.S.ScapeGoat Stephen Hatfill Gets $5.8 Million Anthrax Settlement"
Oh, and the real Anthrax Guy is still out there. Bet he's pissed. Never made a dime.





SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"Tomato 'repacking' vexes salmonella trackers"
FDA unfamiliar with food industry.

" A widespread practice of mixing tomatoes from different farms at produce distribution centers has made it impossible so far to trace the source of a nationwide salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds, federal regulators said Friday. Dr. David Acheson, an associate commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration, acknowledged that the extent of the practice, known as 'repacking,' was a surprise to agency investigators, and that it vastly complicates the process of tracing the path of tomatoes from farm to store. 'We are learning that this is a very common practice,' said Acheson. "Possibly 90 percent of tomatoes are repacked.' The agency has found, for example, that tomatoes from Mexico have been shipped to Florida, repacked and sold with tomatoes from Florida. Similarly, tomatoes from the United States are sent to Mexico, where they are repacked and shipped to the United States as a product of the United States. "

WALL STREET JOURNAL
"Anger Rises Over Salmonella Probe"
Regulators keeping open minds in empty heads.

" More than 11 weeks into a salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds across the U.S., government regulators still have little idea where the outbreak originated. That is causing rising anger among the farmers, distributors and others slammed by slumping sales of tomatoes, the outbreak's prime suspect. As consumers abstain from tomatoes or find alternatives, one growers association called over the weekend for Congress to investigate the Food and Drug Administration, the lead agency on the case. The National Restaurant Association, the industry's main trade group, says the outbreak has cost the food industry at least $100 million. And as some crops rot on the vine, the problem is threatening to reignite a long-simmering trade dispute between tomato growers in Florida and Mexico. The regulators said they can't pinpoint a region, or even a country, where the outbreak might have started. It might even be possible, they said, that tomatoes aren't to blame. Many victims ate tomatoes combined in dishes such as salsa and guacamole. 'We continue to keep an open mind about the possible source of this outbreak,' Patricia Griffin, the branch chief of enteric diseases epidemiology at the CDC, said on the Friday conference call. "

WASHINGTON POST
"U.S. Officials Stymied in Salmonella Search"
Jeez, what goes wit' tamatas? DON'T SAY IT!!! Wouldn't wanna smear any innocent veggies. Again.

" The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also announced it was expanding its investigation to include food items normally served with tomatoes. While tomatoes are still the leading suspected source of the bacterial infections in the two-month-old outbreak, officials said they can't rule out other food items associated with tomatoes. But, they declined to say what those other foods might be. 'It would be irresponsible of us at this point to say where we are expanding the testing," said Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's associate commissioner for food protection. "I'm not prepared to discuss what those items might be.' 'The tomato trail is not getting cold, rather other items are getting hotter," he added. "

GOOGLE NEWS
Nationwide Hamburger Recall For The Fourth Of July
Too many to list, Yankee Doodle Dandy's! The era of Big Gummint is over! Eat shit, it's on the Republicans!

[MORE HERE]
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WHERE IN THE WORLD IS SAL MONELLA?

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AND WHY DOESN'T ANYBODY KNOW?

SHIT HAPPENS. DID IT HAPPEN ON OUR TOMATOES?

The Real Question Is, How Can FOUR U.S. Gov't. Agcy's STILL Not Know, After Almost A MONTH? The Politics Of Food Safety:

CDC
Division of Foodborne, Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases
Salmonellosis
"Salmonella live in the intestinal tracts of humans and other animals, including birds. Salmonella are usually transmitted to humans by eating foods contaminated with animal feces. "

We all know that big business and their lackeys in the Republican Administration don't give a shit about public health. These are the people who brought you tobacco, alcohol, sugar-water, fast food, polyunsaturated fats, and even baby food with no food in it at all, just chemicals. And babies were their business, their only business.

So, when these same assholes decided to go with mega-doses of cancerous chemical fertilizers, pesticides & herbicides, growth hormones, animals eating their own kind, secretly genetically engineered franken-foods, gigantic anti-family factory farms and food from God knows where in the Third World, did anybody think they would exercise proper precautions? Why would they suddenly start giving a shit about us? We're like ants to them.

Still, fascists are at least supposed to make the trains run on time, right? Efficiency and control, above all. Everything is computerized and you can track anything anywhere, right? Whenever there's a bad batch of burgers now, they publish lists of the manufacturers and batch numbers, retailers and sale dates, within hours. OK, maybe some people die before they actually bother to recall the rotten, shit-covered, poisonous meat. But they do catch it, eventually.

Now, we have an entire tomato crop tainted with salmonella bacteria. How come they can't even narrow down the source of these infected tomatoes to one State? They put out a list of the States whose tomatoes are NOT poison. How can they say that without knowing which States tomatoes ARE poison? They act like they don't have a clue. They say they won't have a clue for quite a while. Just stop eating the shit, they say. Eat those other tomatoes, they haven't killed anybody yet. Don't worry, be happy, move along, nothing to see here, fuggeddaboutit. Not!

FDA
Food Protection Plan
Update On The Outbreak
"The Food and Drug Administration is alerting consumers nationwide that a salmonellosis outbreak appears to be linked to consumption of certain types of raw red tomatoes and products containing raw red tomatoes. The bacteria causing the illnesses are Salmonella serotype Saintpaul, an uncommon type of Salmonella.
FDA recommends consuming raw red plum, raw red Roma, or raw round red tomatoes grown and harvested only from the following areas that HAVE NOT BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH THE OUTBREAK: (list)"

You'd think the industry would want to get this over with: Find the sources of the poison tomatoes and shut it down, clean it up, lock somebody up, whatever. They're losing a fortune as people everywhere just quit eating all tomatoes. Most people will probably avoid the love-apples for quite a while; many may never touch the fruit again. So why isn't the tomato biz getting to the bottom of this?

Are they THAT incompetent? Then they shouldn't be allowed to TOUCH our food. Are they covering something up? Then they should be imprisoned, and banned forever from the food business. People have died here.

USDA
Food Safety & Inspection Service
USDA News Releases
Nothing about tomatoes.

But the scariest thing is that the FDA, the Dept of Agriculture, even the CDC can't figure out how tomato A got to supermarket X on truck B from farm Y. Why is that? We're talking millions of tomatoes here, all over the country. Is there no common factor? Or are tomatoes just poisonous naturally, all of a sudden? How come these stores don't know where there produce is coming from? If the Gov. can't track and identify something as big as a fucking tomato, how can they ever be trusted to protect us from deadly little microscopic molds, fungi, bacteria and viruses? This is just a natural occurrence, or an accident of some kind, right? What is the big deal?

If they can't follow the trail of a tomato, how can they follow the trail of a terrorist? Were these veggies delivered by an army of black-ops commando's, driving hundreds of stealth produce trucks in the dead of night? Was this a veggie-terror attack? Then where is Homeland Security? Why can't ANYONE tell us where these goddamned things come from? Are they that incompetent? Or is there a cover-up here?

DHS
Office of Health Affairs
National Center for Food Protection and Defense
A talk shop & pork barrel.

Is NAFTA to blame? Did these tomatoes come from outside the US? Is Bushco hiding this for McCain's benefit? Did the Bushies let them in on Mexican trucks? (Notice Belgium is on the list of safe tomato-sources; so is Canada, and Guatemala. But not Mexico.) Did his food inspectors and customs agents give them a free pass? Notice that previous poisoned tomato outbreaks started in Eastern Florida and Virginia. They're not on the clean list, either. And they're both "battleground States" in this election. Coincidence? HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW???!!!

What the fuck is going on? Why aren't the media asking these questions? How long can it take before we get some answers? Is our food in good, clean hands, or has it all gone to shit?



[UPDATE HERE]
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