Unanswered questions

One of the great features of online stories (and I'll throw blogs into this comment as well) is the ability to comment instantly on news. This quickly reveals the attitudes of readers about an issue like produce safety. Outrage, bafflement, confusion - all can be immediately reflected in reader comments.

I point to this story about a salmonella outbreak at a Quizno's restaurant in Minnesota. From the story in the Post-Bulletin:

A foodborne illness outbreak at Quizno's Subs, 3499 22nd Ave. N.W. in Rochester, wasn't the restaurant's fault.
Larry Edmonson, an epidemiologist with Olmsted County Public Health, said studies showed that tomatoes delivered to the store were contaminated before they even got to the restaurant.
Salmonella made more than 20 Quizno's customers and employees sick in October. The store closed for one day, hired a cleaning company to sterilze equipment and reopened.


That was the story; here was the reader comment:

So tomatoes were the culprit! No mention of where, or how, or what they were contaminated with, or if they're still getting tomatoes from that same source. This article leaves a few unanswered questions.

TK: Unfortunately, there have been far too many unanswered questions for consumers to wrestle with in relation to food borne illness linked to fresh produce. The longer these questions hang in the air, the less trust consumers will place in fresh produce at retail and at restaurants. The FDA has the primary responsibility to provide answers and clarity to the public and needs to step up their outreach.