Dangerous vegetables

Green onions 2005. Spinach 2006. Tomatos 2008. And that's just what we've been told about.

Was this as big as it seems to been now and was it in the USA or all over?

It was large enough to be reported. Numerous er's responding. It is not enough to be a vegan these days.

It was large enough to be reported. Numerous er's responding. It is not enough to be a vegan these days.

Any idea if they were GM foods.(just thinking out loud)Is there links to then and now we could find?

I have no idea free. None whatsoever. I wish I could clue you in. But I too am clueless. It would seem the FDA is in the same boat. Clueless. And they have had weeks to work on it.

[edit on 6/16/2008 by jpm1602]

# How do I get salmonellosis? You get salmonellosis from food and water contaminated with salmonella bacteria. # How does salmonella get in vegetables like tomatoes and lettuce? Vegetables can come into contact with contaminated water. A bacteria-carrying person who forgets to wash their hands before food preparation can contaminate vegetables. Vegetables can also become contaminated if placed in close proximity to or mixed with raw poultry, meat or eggs, and unpasteurized milk. # Which vegetables are most prone to contamination? There are no specific vegetables prone to salmonella contamination. Any vegetable, or fruit, even, may be contaminated if in close proximity to bacteria-carrying sources. For example, contaminated mangos and tomatoes each resulted in salmonella outbreaks in 1990, cantaloupes in 1991, and sprouts in 1996.

www.lifespan.org...

Maybe this will help find some truth.
Its food for thought!(sorry the pun!)

Sorry about the link.I m new to posting

[edit on 16-6-2008 by freemindmine]


Mod Edit. Fixed link.

[edit on 16-6-2008 by GAOTU789]

I don't know the in's and out's of this case, but it reminded me of this -

Transmission also comes through municipal recycling of wastewater into crop fields. This is quite common in emerging industrial economies, and poses serious risks for not only local crop sales but also exports of contaminated vegetables. A 1986 outbreak of ascariasis in Italy was traced to irresponsible wastewater recycling used to grow Balkan vegetable exports.

Takne from Wikipedia page about Ascariasis.

I think the world and the fields are full of fertid sh**. Lets see what's contaminated...next year.

Have they(Goverment) given any reason why this is happening ,You would think there must be a lot of links and it would be easy to find out why?

The fda has been cut and diced like the tomatos they attempt to investigate.
They have been made unics. Unable to perform there jobs appropriately.

Florida tomato industry in 'complete collapse'

UPDATE 1-Florida tomato industry in 'complete collapse'
Tue Jun 10, 2008 9:35am EDT

By Jane Sutton

MIAMI, June 10 (Reuters) - Florida's tomato industry is in "complete collapse" and $40 million worth of tomatoes will rot unless federal regulators quickly trace the source of a salmonella outbreak and clear the state's produce, an industry official said on Tuesday.

"We probably have $40 million worth of product we can't sell. We've had to stop packing, stop picking," said Reggie Brown, executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Saturday warned U.S. consumers that the outbreak was linked to eating certain raw red plum, red Roma, and red round tomatoes, and products containing these tomatoes. Several major restaurant and grocery chains have stopped selling those varieties.

"We're very interested in seeing the FDA bring resolution to this and also would like to express concern for those who've fallen ill," Brown told Reuters.

"It fundamentally shut down the industry," he said.

Florida is the largest tomato-producing state, with a crop valued at $500 million to $700 million annually, he said. The state produces more than 90 percent of the nation's tomatoes this time of year, Brown said. (Editing by Jim Loney and Matthew Lewis)

www.reuters.com...


Mod Edit: New External Source Tags – Please Review This Link.

[edit on 16-6-2008 by GAOTU789]

I thought it had to do with farmers in the US and other places using the cheapest and most abundant water supplies possible to water their crops. No grand conspiracy - just market pressures.

It seems I have so much spinach and heirloom tomatoes growing in my backyard organic garden this year that I'll be forced to give some away to friends.

Originally posted by applebiter
No grand conspiracy - just market pressures.

Florida, USA....

but sovereign,

Sri Oracle

In the case of the spinach outbreak, it was simply that wild boar had walked through contaminated manure and then into the fields of spinach where it was spread by the irrigation water.

One of the biggest causes of contaminated vegetables is a lack of inspection. Produce inspection stations used to number nearly 50,000 back in the 1970s, it's fallen to a mere 10,000. And there's more produce being shipped.

Now, what's bothered me more, why we have so much trouble with e.coli and salmonella in the first place. There was a time when our meat was much safer, heck, I remember I had an aunt that used to eat raw hamburger sandwiches. Now, you can't even get a real rare steak in a restaurant anymore, let alone runny eggs.

If you do a little investigation, you can find out that grain fed cows are the problem. Grass fed cows have 300 times less e.coli than their grain fed counterparts. And what little they do have is easily done away with our stomach acid, where the e.coli from grain fed cows have become acid resistant.

E. coli can also be spread via recycled solutions used to tenderize and enhance flavor in steaks, etc.

Finally, since we process meat enmass in huge processing plants, there is a much greater chance for spreading a little e.coli to a lot of meat.

Chickens are contaminated for most of the same reasons, such as the processing plants.

I think there's something inherantly wrong with the meat factory sort of way of doing things, and a lot of our problems with food come from corporate farming management.

according to a website i came across just recently, the use of raw sewage being used to water and fertilize vegetables is a suspected cause for the latest tomato problem------as far as i know farmers in the usa don't grow their crops directly this way--yet.

I think another contributing problem is that with the frequency of harsh weather and environmental conditions, foods need to be obtained from distant locales and re-routed etc. on a more frequent basis. This adds to the amount of handling, shipping, etc. and causes nightmares with the QC process.

Is anything safe to eat anymore??..... im on the 'ats diet' ..... no bovine milk, no fluoride water, and now no dangerous veggies ......

......on a serious note, its very worrying, i dont eat much of a variety of foods thesedays, i stick to what i know is relatively 'safe'....... and i dont know about anyone else, but here in uk ive noticed fruit, especially apples taste very 'chemical' like, even after washing...

I think there's something inherantly wrong with the meat factory sort of way of doing things, and a lot of our problems with food come from corporate farming management.

I agree. I was raised on a farm and I had a special relationship with our animals. We also had a special relationship with the earth. (soil)

We grew our own food, milked our own cows, collected eggs every day.
Our water came from our well. ( and it was not very good water..alkali)
We pumped water from our "pond" to water our vegatables and our livestock. We made sure that the water was clean and I remember sipping from it from time to time.

When I was in preschool I remember naming our chicks.....as they began to grow I changed thier names.....I still remeber some of them....ie. Brownie, clucker, Sir (Rooster)chicken(ha..yea I named a chicken chicken because he would freeze in his tracks when I ran toward him)

Anyways, I remember having to deal with the fact that we were gonna eat these chickens. I was very young and I remember thinking that these chickens are going to be dinner in the fall.

So, all summer I carried this idea. Sometimes I would think about it and sometimes I would be preoccupied with other stuff.

Finally, fall arrived and I was going into kindergarden. I remember getting off the bus on a crisp fall afternoon and my grandmother told me that my Dad and Grandfather had slaughtered the chickens that day. I walked into the house and the smell of freshly slaughtered chickens was in the air. I don't know if any of you know the smell but it is a combo of wet feather smell mixed in with a heavy dung type of smell.

So, I entered our little house and my Grandma showed me Brownie, one of the chickens...still had some of his pinfeathers on....took off by scalding the chicken after it was beheaded....and I seemed to have come to terms with the idea. We ate chicken that night.

After that I developed a different type of relationship with our farm animals. When I helped feed them I wanted them to be very healthy because I knew that that was our dinner.

My first memory of slaughtering a cow was about the same as a chicken. The cow was a fat heifer I called Daisy May. (yea..I know) My Grandfather shot it in the head, my Dad hoisted it, and my Granddad slit the throat.

I had cared for that heifer as my Grandad wanted me to take some reponsability. I was maybe 6/7 years old. I had that heifer in "my" care (lots of help from Granddad) for about a year and a half before we slaughtered it.

I was proud to eat the meat I had helped raise and we took very good, gentle care of our livestock and poultry.

It was a small operation. Small farm.

So the point is we knew every animal, evry quirk of every animal and we had a deep respect for our animals. When the neighbours dropped by we would talk about our animals and how healthy they were. If an animal was sick word got around and if the vet came often times neighbours would show up to help and to see what was going on with the livestock.

This lifestyle is almost gone. Now we have huge operations and there is no way to really know, first hand, what condition each and every animal is in.

So far as vegeatables go very few raise thier own on the farms now. The operations are all mutimillion dollar operations. ie..A Combine starts at about 250.

There is no way to know

The migrant workers who pick the produce, sometimes, if there is no oversight,
use the fields as a restroom.
Also, I heard about sewage water being used to irrigate. ILLEGAL.
When some people we knew went to South America as missionaries, they were told to use bleach on the vegetables, because of human fertilizer.
That was in the 70's.

Hmm, sounds like some of you don't know that human waste is being used as fertilizer. Here is an article from 2000:

Raw human sewage is now one of Canada's biggest waste disposal problems.

After the water contained in the sewage is treated and released the question is what to do with the enormous volumes of black sludge that is left behind.

In some cases it's ending up as fertilizer on agricultural land.

Bill Allison has been using sewage sludge on his fields for years. "It works good, it's essentially just like liquid manure. We need the nutrients that are in it, especially the nitrogen, it's high in nitrogen and it's high in phosphorous nine."

Another big attraction for the Ontario farmer - it's free.

Taking nutrient rich human waste and using it to nourish the land is not a new concept. Many say its a good idea in principle, but critics ask what about human pathogens and what about all of the heavy metals and chemicals that also get dumped down the drain?

www.cbc.ca...

As Bill says, hes been using it for years. I'm pretty sure it's happening elsewhere and not just in Ontario. Could this be the cause of the outbreaks? I'm not sure, it's possible.

Hmm, sounds like some of you don't know that human waste is being used as fertilizer. Here is an article from 2000:

Thats the best reason I v heard yet.All I would say is why has the outbreak taken 8 years to hit.