Tag Archives: vehicles

More on Salmonella

The first produce to positively match the Salmonella serotype Saintpaul was announced today.  A jalapeño chile, grown in México and processed at an unnamed plant in McAllen, Texas, tested positive for the strain of Salmonella that has sickened at least 1237 people since April.  This is the first time that the bug has actually shown up on a sample of fresh produce.  Perhaps it wasn't tomatoes after all, but it is a nice demonstration of confounding in epidemiological inference (tomatoes and jalapeños are commonly served together in the form of salsa, making it difficult to determine which is the actual vehicle for infection if both are implicated). Now the question is where along the production chain the contamination took place and how we can make sure that we bring an end to this outbreak.  All of the news stories and government reports on this topic can be found on the ProMedMail website.