Tomatoes not relenting, US still in salmonella soup

The Salmonella outbreak in the US has just hit a new high and the citizens are now beginning to get a little more than ticked off. According to the FDA over 9 people in Chicago have contracted the tomato-induced ailment after eating at two franchisees of the same restaurant chain. No clues have been let out regarding the exact identity of the eatery.

Andrew von Eschebach, who elaborated on the present situation in an email sent today, claimed that revealing the name of the restaurant would only hamper the FDA investigations into the matter.

FDA spokeswoman Julie Zawisza also emphasized that the problem in question lay solely with the ‘tomatoes’ and NOT the ‘restaurants’, urging people to refrain from boycotting all eateries in general.

The fretted tomato bug has already managed to down over 200 people in 23 different states, said US health officials. What is keeping the FDA and the American health officials busy as of now is their frantic attempts at identifying the farm in which the contamination began. The FDA has already revealed that a large part of the infected tomatoes had found there way into American food palettes directly from various farms in Florida and Mexico.

Spotting the precise farm where the disease may have originated however has turned out to be a hair-splitting task. Overwhelmed FDA officials have now finally decided to approach the problem systematically. Presently they are looking to simply identify the locations wherein the disease is found to have spread. For the purpose FDA officials are currently doing regular rounds of both, the suppliers and the consumers. ``What our investigators are doing right now is they are visiting the suppliers, the distributors, the importers to get the records that we need to put a nail into the trace-back,'' said officials at the FDA.

Once the infected locations are identified the officials intend to pin down the farms from which these areas might be receiving their daily tomato supplies.
The rest of the investigation, officials say, will fall into place once these initial nitty-gritty’s are taken care of.

In the meantime the average US household, already a nose-crinkler as far as veggies are concerned, have decided to kick the tomato habit altogether.

There couldn’t be a worse phase of business for the local grocer.