Two items on the growing saga of Salmonella-associated Honduran cantaloupes (linked to 59 illnesses in the US and Canada).  Yesterday the Honduran president was pissed at the US import alert, today there is a quote from the Honduran trade minister Trade Minister Fredys Cerrato:

"The United States has the obligation to compensate Agropecuaria Montelibano for the losses it has suffered after its melon exports were paralyzed"

This was followed by comments from Agropecuaria Montelibano’s  GM,  Edilberto Rodriguez who was quoted as saying:

"We have never had any complaints from our clients in the United States or Europe."

The second item comes from Jim Prevor over at the Perishable Pundit who posted a criticism of FDA’s handling of the alert, but included a weird document that he received from Agropecuaria Montelibano.  The document appears to be lab results of a sampling of the hands of two employees  on March 10 (well after the outbreak would have started).

I’m just not really sure what these hand sampling results really say since it’s not clear when they were sampled (like if it was right after handwashing?) and what the results are supposed to represent (are they saying this indicates that all of our employees have clean hands?).  Weird. Not sure sampling hands is a good strategy in trying to demonstrate a good food safety program.