The author of La Gringa’s Blogicito, whose motto is, Gardening and living in La Ceiba, Honduras; neither is easy for this American woman, writes the FDA Inspectors left Honduras on Friday with no word whatsoever as to the results of the tests at Agrolibano. According to La Prensa, the samples are being tested in the U.S. and the results will be given next week.

She also says that little has been heard from the Honduran delegation who went to the U.S. last week to demand proof of the tests and a retraction from the FDA either. She does say that she’s noticed more balanced reports from various agricultural and commercial experts saying that Honduras needs to vigilantly meet international quality and safety standards, but no admission that salmonella did exist in the melons.

While searching for the news video, I ran a across a parody of that scene on YouTube. If you speak Spanish, you may get a kick out of the video below, "Mel Melon con Salmonella." Even if you don’t, you may find it humorous.

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.