By Monica Eng | The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning Monday for consumers to avoid alfalfa sprouts and spicy sprouts that were grown on a farm in Urbana, Ill., because of a suspected link to salmonella.
The agency said preliminary results of an investigation connect the Tiny Greens Organic Farm to a multistate outbreak of salmonella infections that started in November. But Tiny Greens owner Bill Bagby Jr. said that not a single sample of his product or facility that was taken by the FDA or the Illinois Department of Public Health has come back positive for salmonella contamination.
FDA spokeswoman Siobhan DeLancey said her agency has not yet produced a positive result from the nearly 200 samples taken from the Urbana business.
“But in this case,” she said, “we don’t need positive samples, because the epidemiological evidence is so strong.”
That evidence stems from interviews with the salmonella victims conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of them — about 50 percent came from Illinois, according to the FDA — said they ate a sandwich with sprouts on it from a Jimmy John’s outlet, according to Chris Braden, the CDC’s director of the division of foodborne, waterborne and environmental diseases.
Bagby said he is distraught at the news of the FDA’s consumer warning and asked why the outbreak was linked to his greens when the spectrum of infections had come from 15 states, many where he does not distribute sprouts.
“They have only linked it to Jimmy John’s, not to the thousands of pounds of retail sprouts I send out in 4-ounce packages, and yet they are still making me do a recall,” Bagby said.
Bagby said he is proud of the strict sanitation, record-keeping and food safety measures he takes at his farm.
Representatives from all the agencies stressed that the investigation is ongoing and they would issue information about any new results.
“. . . not a single sample of his product or facility that was taken by the FDA or the Illinois Department of Public Health has come back positive for salmonella contamination.
FDA spokeswoman Siobhan DeLancey said her agency has not yet produced a positive result. . . “But in this case,” she said, “we don’t need positive samples. . .”
If this was an egg factory farm owned by a mega-corporation, the FDA would be bending over backward to keep them from being accountable. FDA is a whore for the corporates.
Sounds like Jimmy Johns may have to answer some questions. After twice eating there I won’t go back. And that is on top of having a marginal tasting sandwich on lousy bread. I also think subway is lousy, again with tasteless bread. Don’t these companies know that no matter what you put on a sandwich if you have lousy tasting bread is will be lousy. And to get sick on top of that- oh boy.
They should go to any number of decent Italian eateries in town to get some good bread. No self respecting Italian purveyor would serve bread like subway, Jimmy’s, potbelly, Quiznos etc.
What is it about 200 negative results that DeLancy can’t get into her thick skull? She obviously bases her conclusions on female intuition. That would get her a big hairy F grade in any science class.
Meanwhile, no testing is done to nail down the actual source of the contamination. The persons suffering the most are the management and employees of Tiny Greens.
Clearly its time to review the qualifications of the bureaucrats now in charge after ‘Hope and Change’. Starting with a simple IQ test would eliminate many of the worst offenders.
Contaminated sprouts almost invariably are due to using contaminated seeds. The contaminated lots of sprouts from Tiny Greens had probably already shipped and been consumed and the contaminated seeds probably used up. That is the likely reason that all the samples at Tiny Greens were negative. Negative samples in no way prove that the contamination is not present. They simply mean that the samples did not contain the contaminant. That is why FDA relies on epidemiological evidence that the contamination came from Tiny Greens. You can see corporate and government collusion if you like, but in fact the FDA knows exactly what it is doing in this case and is almost certainly correct in their conclusions. Believe me, I have been in the sprout business as a food safety expert for a long time.