Julie Zawisza, a spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration, told The New York Times late Tuesday,
"We are getting closer to identifying the source or sources."
Dr. Patricia Griffin, the chief of the disease centers’ enteric disease epidemiology branch, was cited as saying no one knows whether food has gotten more dangerous or whether the growing number of outbreaks results from better surveillance, and that both may be true.
The disease control agency has confirmed 167 salmonella cases in the current outbreak. But Dr. Griffin said the agency estimated that only 1 in 38 cases were ever reported to the authorities, so the problem was likely to be greater.
Keith Warriner of the University of Guelph told New Scientist.com that pathogens like Salmonella have probably evolved to cope with life outside our intestines. Escherichia coli O157:H7 strain thrives on leafy greens such as spinach and lettuce, while Salmonella tends to do best on fleshier fruits and vegetables.
The bacteria probably come from groundwater contaminated with animal faeces, he says. Once Salmonella gets on and into a tomato, the fruit acts like an incubator. Bacteria divide even in the cool temperatures of packing houses. "If you get a few samples into the internal tissue, then they will grow for sure," Warriner adds.
Meanwhile, I’ve been to Toronto and back to Quebec City, with a flurry of media activity along the way. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s The National caught up with me in Toronto and aired the story on the national news last night (upper, right). Unfortunately, my Kansas State hockey T-shirt logo was not included in the camera shot.
Last night, from 1-2 a.m. EST, I was the guest on Coast to Coast with George Noory which is broadcast on some 500 AM radio stations across the U.S.. Besides the government and alien conspiracy explanations of how Salmonela gets in tomatoes, it was a lot of fun, and we covered a lot of the issues. If anyone out there heard the show, please pass on your constructive comments.
This morning it was off to the CBC studios in Quebec City for an appearance on Newsworld. I proudly wore my barfblog T-shirt.
And if you’re a French professor or graduate student from Kansas and you’re in Quebec, you have to partake of the local food culture; that means poutine.
