Salmonella is Still Spreading; CNN Hero
DOBBS: The salmonella outbreak is still spreading through the country tonight. More than 160 new cases reported. The Food and Drug Administration tonight says the outbreak is related to tomatoes and that those tomatoes most likely, most likely come from Florida or Mexico. As Louise Schiavone now reports, the FDA is finally, finally sending inspectors to Mexico and Florida.</s>LOUISE SCHIAVONE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Add more victims to the nation's salmonella outbreak.</s>VOICE OF DR. IAN WILLIAMS, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL: Since April there now have been 552 persons identified with salmonella St. Paul (ph) with the same genetic fingerprint.</s>SCHIAVONE: The outbreak covers 32 states and Washington, D.C. with almost half of the cases from Texas. The Centers for Disease Control says considering unreported cases it is likely that thousands of people have been affected. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration says it is ready to put inspectors on the ground.</s>VOICE OF DR. DAVID ACHESON, ASSOC. COMMISSIONER OF FOODS, FDA: The FDA is sending teams of multidisciplinary experts to both Mexico and Florida this weekend with its goal of conducting joint inspections on the farms and throughout the distribution chain.</s>SCHIAVONE: The nation's billion dollar a year tomato farming business has lost tens of millions of dollars in the outbreak, which so far has not triggered a product recall from the</s>FDA. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you certain, given the status of this investigation, that the source of the salmonella St. Paul outbreak is in fact tomatoes? You don't have a sample yet that you are working from, right?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We do not have a positive salmonella in tomatoes.</s>SCHIAVONE: To this former director of FDA import operations that doesn't make sense.</s>CARL NIELSEN, RET. DIR. OF IMPORT OPERATIONS, FDA: What do we know about the conditions? What do we know about the water? Little information is known. The government has the tendency then to more or less swoop everybody into the same group, make everybody suffer.</s>SCHIAVONE: The CDC insists it does not have a list of possible sources in this outbreak. It believes tomatoes are the culprit. Although so far no testing has turned up the salmonella strain on any tomatoes.</s>SCHIAVONE: Lou, authorities say the problem may not exist on a farm but in a packing shed, a warehouse or a distribution center. And working with Homeland Security, they have not ruled out the possibility of a deliberate contamination, but the FDA stresses at this point there is no evidence of that -- Lou.</s>DOBBS: Well there is not for that matter any evidence of salmonella. I mean this is -- it is absolutely confounding to think that these are intelligent, presumably educated, well-informed, well- meaning people running the</s>FDA. SCHIAVONE: Well there is evidence of salmonella, as we know, Lou, but we don't have evidence, we don't have hard evidence...</s>SCHIAVONE: ... off of a tomato right.</s>DOBBS: And this is -- you know, OK, let's back up here. The FDA doesn't know where the salmonella came from. The FDA doesn't have any positive evidence in a tomato of salmonella. They don't know anything about the distribution system; they don't know anything about the packing operations, the farms themselves, are only this weekend sending inspectors into the field. You will recall I suggested they might do that here yesterday, might go to the tomato farms in Mexico and Florida to find out. Now they're saying that this outbreak its origins are in both Florida and Mexico? That defies credulity.</s>SCHIAVONE: They say that there are possible links to farms in Florida and/or Mexico. So what they want to find out through their trace back system and through examining the soil and the farming conditions I guess in both places on particular farms in both locations is what were the growing conditions? What was the path? Did they perhaps, these crops from Mexico and Florida, cross at some point and wind up together in a distribution shed or a warehouse or packing center?</s>DOBBS: What are the implications, as you report or in the FDA reports, half of these cases, more than 500 cases that we know of and they suspected that what is the ratio 50 to each one reported...</s>SCHIAVONE: There are 30 or more for each one, some say 40...</s>DOBBS: Thirty or more. OK, 30, 40, whatever the number is.</s>SCHIAVONE: Thousands. Thousands and thousands.</s>DOBBS: Thousands, but we know the 500 definitively, definitely...</s>SCHIAVONE: Five hundred fifty-two.</s>DOBBS: Those, half of them are in the state of Texas.</s>SCHIAVONE: Two hundred and sixty-five from the state of Texas.</s>DOBBS: What is the explanation by the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control for the fact that there are so many within one state?</s>SCHIAVONE: They say that...</s>DOBBS: And how would Florida get involved in a Texas situation?</s>SCHIAVONE: Right. There are -- look, there are just so many questions about this. And they themselves say that it would be almost impossible, not utterly impossible, but highly unlikely for this salmonella St. Paul with the same genetic fingerprint to exist both in Mexico and Florida. They just don't know.</s>DOBBS: Then why did that make that statement tonight?</s>DOBBS: Well I'm asking you a question -- I know you've asked this question a hundred times of them. It's terrific reporting, but this has got -- I mean this is just unbelievable. Sheer brazen incompetence. Thank you very much. Louise Schiavone. We will of course have more as it becomes available. Keep digging. We appreciate it. This is the country's, by the way, 13th salmonella outbreak over the course of the past 18 years. Florida is the nation's top tomato producer and industry experts estimate this outbreak has already cost Florida alone $40 million in lost tomato production. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that this outbreak will cost the national tomato industry more than 100 million. And there still isn't any hard evidence that the salmonella is in the tomatoes. This salmonella outbreak underscores the FDA's utter inability to protect the American consuming public. The FDA is desperately short of both resources and funding and as Lisa Sylvester now reports, that is very simply putting American lives in danger.</s>LISA SYLVESTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The FDA office in charge of food safety has had its workload increase more than 20 percent in recent years. But the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition instead of getting more money has had its staffing and budget slashed. According to the Government Accountability Office, their office was cut 14 percent from 2003 to 2006. Most of the cuts came in the field, those in charge of inspecting the food consumers eat. Fewer inspectors means fewer inspections. The GAO says in 2001 there were 211 inspections of foreign food companies. Last year only 96. But the problems for the agency date back even further.</s>BYRON RICHARDS, FIGHT FOR YOUR HEALTH: Well really, the FDA mandate which is to protect the public, especially regarding the safety of drugs and medications has really taken a slide in the past 15 years.</s>SYLVESTER: Beginning in 1992, drug companies began paying a user fee to the FDA as congressional funding remained flat.</s>REP. ROSA DELAURO (D), CONNECTICUT: They have advisory panels at the FDA. And if you take a look at them, they are filled with conflicts of interest, of people who have various ties with the industry.</s>SYLVESTER: Consumer watchdog Public Citizen says the FDA has been slow to pull problem drugs like Vioxx off the market. A drug that is still being sold in the United States as Propoxyphene, also known as Darvon (ph) and Darvocet (ph). Public Citizen says more than 2,000 people have accidentally died taking the drug since 1981, many due to heart failure.</s>SIDNEY WOLF, PUBLIC CITIZEN: The leaders in the Food and Drug Administration are perfectly aware of how dangerous and how minimally effective this drug is and it's inexcusable that they haven't taken this action long ago.</s>SYLVESTER: The FDA when asked about not fulfilling its mandate pointed out that the administration is amending its fiscal year 2009 request to include an additional $275 million for the agency. And that the FDA is moving to fill an additional 1,300 staff positions -- Lou.</s>DOBBS: Unbelievable. Thank you very much, Lisa -- Lisa Sylvester. Up next here, country of origin labeling might have limited the scope of this outbreak. So why isn't it working? Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro will join me and increasingly brazen efforts to cross our border with Mexico, we'll have that report as well and a great deal more. We'll be right back. Stay with us.