Tomato 'repacking' vexes salmonella trackers
A widespread practice of mixing tomatoes from different farms at produce distribution centers has made it impossible so far to trace the source of a nationwide salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds, federal regulators said Friday.
Dr. David Acheson, an associate commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration, acknowledged that the extent of the practice, known as "repacking," was a surprise to agency investigators, and that it vastly complicates the process of tracing the path of tomatoes from farm to store.
"We are learning that this is a very common practice," said Acheson. "Possibly 90 percent of tomatoes are repacked."
The agency has found, for example, that tomatoes from Mexico have been shipped to Florida, repacked and sold with tomatoes from Florida. Similarly, tomatoes from the United States are sent to Mexico, where they are repacked and shipped to the United States as a product of the United States.
None of these juggled tomatoes has yet been linked to the salmonella outbreak, but the practice illustrates one reason why FDA disease detectives have had no success in tracking the bug back to the farms in Mexico or southern Florida, where they think it may have originated.
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Distributors frequently repack tomatoes to meet the needs of commercial customers, such as restaurant chains, that demand that each box contain vegetables of similar size and ripeness.
Not only does repacking make it harder to figure out where a bad tomato may have been grown, it raises the prospect that consumers who think they are buying produce from one of the many designated "safe" states - California is one of them - may be getting tomatoes comingled with produce from other regions.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/28/BA9611GFS7.DTL
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