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Saturday 15 November 2008 20:58 UTC
Around 6,000 Icelanders took to the streets in protest against the effects of the financial crisis. The demonstrators threw eggs, tomatoes and toilet paper at the parliamentary building and called for the resignation of Prime Minister Geir Haarde. The state of Iceland may go bankrupt now that the country’s three largest banks have collapsed. The state treasury can only be rescued by money from the International Monetary Fund. Inflation has increased 15 percent and unemployment has rocketed. The turnout of 6,000 people was high as Iceland only has 320,000 residents. Bloomberg has more.

Thanks, FDA, who nearly wiped out the tomato industry because of their premature and irresponsible claims. Now hot peppers are on their list of crops to destroy. Truth is the FDA doesn’t have a clue what’s causing these salmonella outbreaks.

WASHINGTON - It’s OK to eat all kinds of tomatoes again, the U.S. government declared Thursday — lifting its salmonella warning on the summer favorites amid signs that the record outbreak, while not over, may finally be slowing. Hot peppers still get a caution: The people most at risk of salmonella — including the elderly and people with weak immune systems — should avoid fresh jalapenos and serranos, and any dishes that may contain them such as fresh salsa, federal health officials advised. More

Source: USA Today
Mexico’s Agriculture Department says its tests found no salmonella in Mexican tomatoes. It says Mexican officials took samples from the same soil, water and tomatoes recently examined by U.S. inspectors and found no evidence of the bacteria. A team of inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration visited five Mexican farms in search of the source of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened more than 1,000 people.
Also See: FDA in Fumbling Fiasco over Salmonella

(NaturalNews) Watching the FDA trip over its own clumsy self while groping for answers on Salmonella is a sad affair. Following the FDA-encouraged destruction of tens of millions of dollars of perfectly good tomatoes, this confused, bewildered agency admits that tomatoes may not have been the problem after all, and it has now set its sights on destroying the peppers industry. Is there no vegetable safe from the destruction of the FDA?

Tomatoes don’t harbor salmonella, by the way. Neither do peppers, onions, cilantro or spinach. Salmonella only festers in factory-farmed animals, folks, and that means the real source of contamination is no doubt some animal factory upstream from the vegetable processing centers. So why isn’t the FDA going after the animal factories that likely caused this whole fiasco? Because making Americans scared of their vegetables is a great way to advance the FDA’s food irradiation agenda which would destroy virtually all the medicinal phytonutrients in plants. More

Washington Post
Tomatoes carrying a rare form of salmonella that has sickened more than 800 people may still be on the market, federal officials said yesterday, two weeks after they first warned consumers about the risk. Investigators are considering the possibility that other produce may be spreading the bacteria. “We continue to see a strong association with tomatoes, but we are keeping an open mind about other ingredients,” said Patricia Griffin, a top epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More

My guess is the CDC hasn’t a clue what the salmonella source is because the salmonella may have its origins from “the first genetically modified organism (GMO), an E coli bug containing a salmonella gene…created in 1973. They introduced the GM technology to make herbicide resistance crops. “A wide range of plants have been modified, including cotton, oilseed rape and tobacco….Researchers are currently developing GM bananas that would include a dose of hepatitis B vaccine….”

“The source of contamination has been ongoing at least through early June, and we don’t have any evidence that whatever the source is, it’s been removed from the market,” said Patricia Griffin of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Disease detectives at the CDC in Atlanta are double-checking their own probes just in case some other type of produce is really the culprit. “We have also kept an open mind about other possibilities and are looking into other ingredients,” Dr. Griffin said. She wouldn’t identify other potential suspects, except to say that from the beginning some patients have told the CDC the tomatoes they ate were in salsa and guacamole. More

“Officials are saying there are bad tomatoes out there, but they can’t find them, they don’t know where they are from,” said Jim Mills, sales manager at Produce Express in Sacramento, which supplies fruits and vegetables to hundreds of local eateries. He said his office fielded more than 300 calls Monday from anxious customers. The outbreak was first spotted in New Mexico and Texas, where investigators identified 57 tomato-related salmonella infections, apparently from a common source, between April 23 and June 1. In the past week, genetic testing has linked dozens of additional salmonella infections in other states to the same source.

At this time of year, according to industry experts, most red round, red Roma and red plum tomatoes sold in California and across the country come from just two regions: Florida and Mexico. Since the FDA has been unable to narrow its investigation to a particular farm or packing operation, all three of the popular-variety tomatoes from those areas are suspect. More

Restaurants, fast-food chains and supermarkets across Southern California removed fresh red Roma, plum and red round tomatoes from their shelves and took them off their menus this weekend as the U.S. government warned of a widening outbreak of salmonella. The Food and Drug Administration said consumers should avoid raw red plum, red Roma or round red tomatoes, which have been tied to 145 infections reported since mid-April. More

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Salmonella food poisoning first linked to uncooked tomatoes has spread to 16 states, federal health officials said Saturday. Investigations by the Texas and New Mexico Departments of Health and the U.S. Indian Health Service have tied 56 cases in Texas and 55 in New Mexico to raw, uncooked, tomatoes.

“We’re seeing a steady increase,” Deborah Busemeyer, New Mexico Department of Health communications director, said Saturday. An additional 50 people have been sickened by the same Salmonella “Saintpaul” infection in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. More

ATLANTA (AP) — An outbreak of salmonella food poisoning first linked to uncooked tomatoes has now been reported in nine states, U.S. health officials said Tuesday.

Lab tests have confirmed 40 illnesses in Texas and New Mexico as the same type of salmonella, right down to the genetic fingerprint. An investigation by Texas and New Mexico health authorities and the Indian Health Service tied those cases to uncooked, raw, large tomatoes.

At least 17 people in Texas and New Mexico have been hospitalized. None have died, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More