12/15/05 Meat gets a bad wrap

Meat always gets a bum wrap when it comes to food born illness but what the anti-meat crowd would rather we never knew is that produce is actually responsible for more food born diseases than meat and poultry. Last year there were three separate outbreaks resulting in 561 Salmonella infections caused by roma tomato's. In 2003 green onions entered the US food chain and transmitted hepatitis A to 555 people killing three. In 2000 -2002 contaminated cantaloupe made 155 sick and killed two people. What these all have in common, despite being produce, is that they were imported from South America or Mexico. I am continually harping about the risk of about becoming dependant upon imports for our food . Food poisoning and lack of FDA standards should be reason enough to support American farmers. The illnesses, deaths and outbreaks from imported produce sicken hundreds of people at time and are larger than any poultry related outbreaks. So even if they are cheaper do you still want those melons from Mexico? Source: CSPI press release www.scpinet.org/foodsafety/outbreak-report.html