Food Safety News - Tomatoes and Risk

This is interesting commentary on the tomato Salmonella 'crisis'.  Basically stated, the public is induced not to accept any risk with our food supply. MB

June 12 2008 CDC update - Investigation of Outbreak of Infections Caused by Salmonella Saintpaul

US: Attack of the tomato industry killers

11.jun.08

Financial Post

Terence Corcoran, editor of the Financial Post, writes that it started out as another killer tomato story - one Texas man dead from salmonella poisoning, 146 others suffering in 16 states - but now it's turning into the killer of the tomato industry story. How did that happen?

The usual. It begins with a food poisoning, gets picked up by brain-dead media, story flies out of control for 48 hours, regulators swing into extreme self-preservation mode, risk-ignorant consumers 2,000 kilometres away get confused and panicky, and the food in question - a billion dollar industry - gets blown away.

The bare bones junk science sequence of this week's tomato scare story couldn't be more illustrative of our absurd inability to cope with what are really local and relatively minor commonplace events that involve risk that is minimal to non-existent. Food scare stories are also commonplace, and occur even though food risks are generally easily controlled, preventable and avoidable. [MORE]

Latest FDA updates at http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/tomatoes.html