The recent salmonella-tomato scare
is costing the U.S. economy big. Tomato growers are being forced to let their
crops rot on the vine when the fact is that we have no idea where the outbreak
is coming from. In fact, all we really have to go on thus far is a report that
one person died from salmonella poisoning after he ate a tomato, which we
examine in more detail in this report.
In fact, a
report by the U.S. Center for
Disease Control, the CDC, stated "raw tomatoes as the likely source of the
illnesses" which they have been tracking since April, yet became a full-blown
scare in June. The problem here is that tomatoes are very commonly used raw in
many meals and we don't even know exactly what variety of tomato he ate, nor if
the salmonella came from, most likely, cross contamination with tainted beef.
Additionally, the number of people who have been affected is far from an
epidemic - a mere 167 people in 17 states - a statistical insignificant anomaly
at best.
Salmonella infection symptoms typically
only appear after 12 to 72 hours, thus a large number of foods may be the
cause. While the CDC does a great job in investigating and reporting, the fact
is that this scare may just be that, especially since we do not know the
source. Most people just get some diarrhea from salmonella, and few die from
it. In fact, most people do not even know when they suffer from it.
The accusation of salmonella poisoning comes from
the wife of a diseased cancer patient who had 4 tumors and who happened to have
eaten a tomato. On the other hand, treatment for cancer and the disease itself
result in patients having a compromised immune system, and although this
specific patient was found to have salmonella after he died, the cancer he
suffered from is much more likely to have taken his life. Additionally, the
accusation came from the deceased mans wife, not medical professionals, thus
further diminishing her claim and proving this is an unwarranted scare, as
there was no medical evidence presented defining salmonella as the actual cause
of death in this case. A more likely scenario here is that we are looking at
the search for victimhood and a lawyer who wants to somehow establish
victimhood by pulling a rabbit out of an empty hat.
Meanwhile, Americans are essentially boycotting tomatoes, thus hurting an
industry for no reason other than an unwarranted government scare fueled by the
media.
This is not the first time media scares based
on CDC reports have hurt industries. The bird-flu scare cost the nation untold
millions of dollars after a CDC report spread doomsday fears that the virus
could jump species and kill millions of people, and that scare amounted to
nothing. Meanwhile, new technologies constantly emerge to test for problems
such as salmonella, not to mention the proliferation of equipment to test for
various strains of salmonella, thus leading to a higher number of detections
because there are more points of testing. You can not find what you have
previously not tested for.
In this case, CDC should
probably stand for Center for Declaring Chaos, as there is just no evidence
thus far establishing salmonella as the cause of death in the cancer patient,
nor has any source of tomato based salmonella been identified. Additionally,
vegetables are not native carriers of salmonella. Until a clear source is
determined, if it can be, this is just a scare by the CDC which itself fears
not reporting potential problems despite not having all the facts. Political
Correctness by a U.S. government agency is costing farmers millions of dollars
and making Americans afraid of monsters under the bed. |
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