The salmonella tainted tomato investigation is still ongoing. They haven’t found the source of the bad tomatoes. They haven’t even found a tomato tainted with salmonella. They have continued to plug ahead with the idea that it was tomatoes making people sick, until recently. It seems that people are still getting sick from that very particular strain of salmonella, and since this has been ongoing for so long, there is no way it could possible be a fresh tomato. No matter how they are stored, tomatoes simply don’t last months. They are now ready to explore other options of what it might be that is making people sick. Now they are considering things commonly served with tomatoes. I’d say that’s a pretty broad range of things.

I’ve known about their lack of surety concerning the culprit being tomatoes for at least a couple of days. My feeling is that right this moment, any foodstuffs at the grocery store could be the thing that kills me. Maybe it’s avocados. Maybe it’s carrots. Maybe it’s lettuce … again. Maybe it’s even salad dressing. Who knows at this point? Doesn’t exactly put me in the mood to go grocery shopping, so we will be eating simply until we go to the market on Saturday. At least if anything from there makes me sick, I know who to throw up on and point the finger of blame at.

It’s not so easy to point the finger of blame at someone for a tainted tomato, or any vegetable, bought at a supermarket. If nothing else comes of this latest food mess, it might be that people have a better understanding of how those vegetables get to their market. I know I was surprised to find out about repacking. I wasn’t surprised to hear vegetables are shipped to warehouses and repacked by size, weight, ripeness, etc. I assumed that happened. No, what surprised me was finding out that tomatoes from Mexico are shipped to a state in the USA, repacked with that’s states produce, and then it is sold as a product of the USA. The opposite also apparently seems to be true, that tomatoes from a state in the USA can be shipped to Mexico, repacked with Mexican tomatoes, and then shipped back to the USA as a product of the USA.

In light of this revelation, it would seem those stickers on fruits and vegetables are totally meaningless. When I pick up a vegetable upon which a sticker says it is a product of the USA (or Mexico, Brazil, etc.), I expect it to actually be a product of that country. There are countries I don’t buy from, and there are products I don’t buy from certain countries. With the repacking system they have going on with tomatoes, who knows where any particular tomato comes from, and I have no doubt this process applies to many, many things in the produce department. Hell, it might even apply to everything in the store. How am I to know the tomatoes used in my American-made tomato sauce are actually grown in the USA? I don’t.

The last few years of food scares have really put me off food that isn’t grown by someone I have personally conversed with in a face-to-face situation. Unfortunately, that leads to two possible dietary realities: eat a completely seasonal diet or buy in bulk and can/freeze/dry/store foods to cover all seasons. We can’t afford to buy organic and local food in bulk, because it is rather expensive, and I would die during the winter months when most of the things available fresh are things I don’t especially like to eat. That forces me to buy some foods at the grocery store, and that leaves me with a nervous twitch running down my spine every time I do so. It’s not fair we have to think and worry that the foods being sold in the corner store might make us sick or kill us. It’s not fair at all.

I really do wish my garden had done better this year. Next year, I will be throwing myself entirely into gardening, and I will succeed. It feels like an absolute necessity to be producing as much of our own food as possible and buying what we can’t produce from our farmer friends. I’d like very much to never have to go to a grocery store again, except for things like coffee, tea, and Dr Pepper. I doubt that will ever happen, but it’s a nice dream of mine.

Here are some associated links about the ongoing investigation:

Unsolved Mysteries: Tainted Tomatoes or Not?

Tomato ‘repacking’ vexes salmonella trackers

Salmonella probe adds foods served with tomatoes