228 People in 22 States Sickened in Ongoing Salmonella-Tomato Outbreak

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter
Friday, June 13, 2008; 3:00 AM

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THURSDAY, June 12 (HealthDay News) -- The number of people sickened in the ongoing outbreak of salmonella-contaminated tomatoes has risen to 228 in 22 states, with 25 hospitalizations, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.

Also Thursday, Congressional investigators said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has failed to meet its own stated goals of protecting the nation's food supply.

The investigators for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) were scheduled to tell the House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee that the FDA has done little to implement its "food protection plan," which the agency released in November, The New York Times reported.

"In March 2008, FDA officials indicated that a progress report on actions taken to implement the 'food protection plan' would be issued in April 2008. In May, FDA officials told us that they had prepared a draft progress report, but as of June 4, 2008, FDA had not made this report public.

The food protection plan calls for establishing a risk-based inspection system of food plants, "which is particularly important as the numbers of food firms have increased while inspections have decreased," the accountability office report said, according to the Times.

The release of the GAO report came at the same time that federal health officials said they were zeroing in on a source for the recent outbreak of salmonella from contaminated tomatoes, while the number of cases continues to mount.

"The question is where specifically did these tomatoes come from," Dr. David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said during a teleconference Wednesday. "We're getting very close, but at this point, today, we don't know for sure where they did come from."

Parts of Florida are still under investigation, although northern Florida, which was not harvesting at the time the outbreaks began, has been ruled out as a source for the contamination.

Several other states have been excluded but, beyond that, Acheson said, "anywhere else is essentially open for question in terms of whether that is the source."