QA -What about tomatoes?

From the AP, a reporter's question: Was the early focus on tomatoes; could it be that investigators were asking the wrong thing? You hadn't seen this kind of outbreak with jalapenos before, but you had seen it with tomatoes. Could it be you had a signal about tomatoes, because you weren't asking a (better? couldn't understand this word) question?

Dr. Robert Tauxe of the CDC replies:

"I think that the initial investigation into this outbreak considered a wide range of different possibilities that had been described as a source of salmonella or that seemed likely at the time. The initial set of hypothesis-generating interviews was conduced that asked people, among other things, whether they had eaten green bell peppers, red bell peppers or other types of peppers. They did not go down an exhaustive list of all the other types of peppers. What was thought to be a relatively small proportion of those people answered yes to each of the peppers.

On the basis of that, the whole case control investigation was developed based on the most common foods that were reported by the people who had been ill, and that's one that identified a strong association with tomatoes and also did not find an association with either eating salsa or guacamole, which were were also popular foods there were mentioned commonly. I think if an association had been found with eating salsa or guacamole in the first investigation, attention might have focused more on all the ingredients of salsa or guacamole but since there was not a specific association with salsa or guacamole in that first investigation or a risk identified separately from that of tomatoes, that was where the investigation took us."

No CDC/FDA exoneration of tomatoes - what were you expecting?
Follow up AP question: So when you look at the totality of the evidence now, does the evidence on tomatoes seem to be relatively weaker?


Dr. Robert Tauxe continues:

"I think that the epidemiological and laboratory information is very strong for jalapeno peppers and also strong for the Serrano peppers, which means we are now talking about two different food vehicles with culture confirmations. The information about tomatoes was from the early study time period and it was more restricted in time and does not have confirmatory laboratory finding behind it."