Peppers from Mexico-Who'd Have Guessed!

By now, I should be immune to "news rage". At least once a week, I'm totally undone by some major media report or another expecting us to either swallow some inane assertion whole, like 'Vitamin E makes you prone to cancer', or force-fed some story with many if not most of the parts missing like a supermarket chicken and so garbled that it doesn't make sense to a thinking adult. Most of these stories are simply stupid; filler on a slow news day and written by lazy gasbag reporters from something they gleaned from their favorite blog.

But, the story about the salmonella tomatoes kept shrinking and shrinking until all the general public heard was, "don't eat tomatoes". And, to prove people are somewhat aware and concerned about their health, they didn't. The FDA got into the act by refusing to clear the tomatoes of several states for two whole months, thus destroying the entire United States tomato crop and costing US tomato growers in excess of $200 million. For once, the stories about the crops rotting in the fields were true-and it wasn't because we didn't let enough illegal workers in to pick them. The foot-dragging and lack of forthright facts even destroyed the crops of states in the north whose tomatoes wouldn't even be ripe until a full month after the start of the outbreak!

During the first news reports, a map was shown listing states with evidence of salmonella infections suspected to be related. It was pretty clear from early reporting the route the guilty little red devils had taken-starting in the southwest along the border crossings of Texas and New Mexico, heading up the I-69 NAFTA corridor and spreading horizontally from there. And yet, the FDA-generated reports suggested contaminated tomatoes could have come from just about anywhere. California tomatoes were some of the first to be cleared; Florida tomatoes, some of the last-even though the Growers Associations begged repeatedly for the FDA to get in the fields and test their crops. In fact, it was easy to find out that tomatoes in April/May almost entirely come from Florida and Mexico. Georgia's tomato crop was hinted as being the culprit-and there weren't any cases in Georgia.

And still, confirmed cases of Saint Paul strain of salmonella kept mounting, finally reaching over 1400 confirmed illnesses. The FDA still wouldn't clear Florida's tomato growers-and wouldn't say 'Mexico' if you slapped them with a piñata! Finally, after tomato season had been destroyed for most of the US-and was over by more than a month south of the border, the FDA hinted they might find it necessary to look at Mexico's tomato crop as a possible suspect. Within a matter of days, the Mexican government announced they had no problems with tomatoes and demanded the US government clear them of suspicion immediately. The United States, ever eager to keep trade flowing regardless of the cost to its citizens promptly cleared tomatoes-and blamed peppers!

To be fair to the FDA, they weren't the ones to blame peppers originally. Remember, they had their top people supposedly testing and investigating the outbreak and had never implicated the peppers. But, after a sharp Minnesota public health official positively identified the Saint Paul salmonella strain in jalapeno peppers from a chain of local restaurants, the FDA had to admit that, yes; Mexican import peppers were likely the problem.

Meanwhile Americans kept getting sick. Nearly 85% of our peppers are imported-from Mexico! With no US crops left to destroy, the FDA gingerly started agreed-upon methods to investigate Mexico's export pepper crops. Mexico started its own investigation. Both groups found some evidence of salmonella-but couldn't agree on the type, location or amount. Mexico pointed out it had no evidence of salmonella reported among its population. Nobody mentioned that the methods for reporting such an outbreak in Mexico are slim to none. Neither did anybody point out that a population's susceptibility to a pathogen often depends on prior exposure and developed immunity-the very reason Montezuma's Revenge hits travelers and not natives. And it was American citizens that were sick, not Mexican citizens.

Finally, four months after the first reported case, the FDA announced that peppers and possibly tomatoes and cilantro from Mexico should be considered unsafe. Untold millions have been lost to agriculture and business in the meantime. However, the profits of the big agribiz importers were protected and their competition mortally wounded in the process.

Who were the winners and who were the losers in this textbook lesson in bureaucratic irresponsibility?

In a true free-media country, this whole story would have been strung together and reported from the first. The fact is that it most likely says more about the media ownership and their relationship to global trade than government suppression. Who, then, suppresses the FDA?

No amount of institutionalized incompetence can account for the deliberate foot-dragging, stalling and false leads this bunch of Keystone cops engaged in for over four months! And an AP report from yesterday by writer Garance Burke divulges the information that peppers from Mexico have been the agricultural product most often rejected at the border for import over the past year-well before the current outbreak. And, yes, they have been rejected for salmonella-the FDA's records themselves show that 88 loads of chilies have been rejected since January-ten percent were found to contain salmonella. In the past year, 158 shipments of fresh and dried chilies were rejected of which 8% contained salmonella.

Salmonella was not the only reason these chilies were rejected; other reasons cited were illegal pesticides, filth and, in one instance, a poisonous substance. Since less than one percent of all shipments of food are inspected at the border, its a wonder this type of outbreak hasn't happened before. Perhaps it has. With this kind of NAFTA protectionism and institutionalized politicization of the FDA, we would never find out without the dedicated efforts of honest state public health officials and reporters like Garance Burke.

We can demand full disclosure on food origin-and buy locally whenever possible. Not only would we have a safer, healthier diet, we'd likely save money and support local business. Only in this way can we do any damage to the large trans-national agribiz conglomerates that have shown they are willing to make us ill-or worse-and charge us for the privilege. The bigger question becomes, what are we going to do about entire federal bureaucracies that have been perverted to private interests on our dime? Because the FDA is not the first-and it certainly is not the only one. Blaming one party or the other wont help-certainly such fact-shuffling couldn't have been perfected in only seven years! The rich and powerful that benefit from globalized labor have been spending plenty of cash to assure that things go their way, regardless of the cost to the common citizen.

The ultimate cost amounts to a far higher toll than millions in farm losses, thousands of illnesses, and untimely deaths, whether to humans or pets. The cost becomes one of total loss of our sovereignty and our form of self-government. If we ever hope to trust our food supply-and our government-again, we need to take steps to assure the appropriate checks and balances are back in play and under our heightened scrutiny. Not only will your votes in November need to reflect the demand for better accountability, these questions need to be asked now of all candidates for every public office. Reform must start at the local level and work its way up the governmental ladder. Make sure your congressman knows your name and your views. It's obvious now that our Neros are fiddling while Rome burns-but we all saw the smoke and did nothing. Whose fault is that?