Group faults officials on salmonella outbreak

WASHINGTON - A failure by government agencies to coordinate their investigation into a US salmonella outbreak may have put the public at risk and caused needless harm to the tomato industry, according to a report.

The report, being released today, also questions why US officials maintained "so steadfastly and for so long" that tomatoes were the leading suspect in the outbreak.

The Produce Safety Project, an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts at Georgetown University, produced the report. The project advocates mandatory safety standards for produce.

Salmonella sickened more than 1,400 people from April through August, the largest outbreak of food poisoning in a decade. Although health officials initially cited tomatoes as a cause, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a US agency in Atlanta, later said that tainted jalapeno peppers were a major cause, that serrano peppers contributed, and that tomatoes may have caused some illnesses, especially early in the outbreak.

A lack of coordination and communication "may well have resulted in a public health response that was ineffective in protecting the public and caused significant unnecessary harm to the tomato industry," the report says.

The report calls for an examination of how quickly information was shared among local, state, and federal officials and whether they fully disclosed relevant information to one another.