Cucumbers grown in Mexico have caused a salmonella outbreak in the U.S. One person has died, and hundreds of people have gotten sick. Since July, 27 states have reported salmonella cases. Half of the people who got sick are children under 18. Arizona has 66 cases, which is the state with the most cases. The Source of the outbreak has not been found yet.
I think that the U.S. should take better precautions when it comes to trading food with other countries. It is an easy way to get many sick.
What could the U.S. do to help prevent illnesses like this? What is good and bad about trading foods with other countries?
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It would be very expensive and time consuming for the US to test every shipment of food that we get in. I think it was just a matter of bad luck that they missed this one. I haven't a story like this for awhile so just think of how shipments have been stopped by the FDA because they had viruses or disease on them. But no one ever talks about that...
Oh god... this shows again that the guidelines for food that gets traded should be higher to avoid outbreaks of diseases like salmonella. I think especially food that normally won't be cooked, like cucumbers or fruits and some vegetables in general should be controlled extra strictly.
They should probably do a better job of looking over and testing than this issue could have totally been avoided.
I think they should test more of the food before it comes to the country for diseases. A good thing about trading with countries is that it can be way cheaper and easier than doing it within the country. A bad thing is that outbreaks like this is more of a possibility.
I think more testing of the food from import items is probably the best way to prevent illnesses from occurring in the U.S. We could lessen the amount of imported goods but that will probably damage our economy though.
It would be hard for our country to be able to tell whether food from other countries can lead to sickness. But they need to find the specific place where the food was grown, and stop spreading outbreaks as soon as possible.
I think they should make sure that there is nothing in the food before they sell it and make sure its safe to sell. It can be good and bad at the same time i think its bad because most countries don't have a way to prevent things and we do sometimes. Good because you can grow that kind of food over here.
Usually the product has a farm code on it that identifies which farm it came from. This would lead investigators to this particular farm where they could stop the cause of the salmonella. It must be a fairly big problem as well because the cucumbers have cause cases in 27 different states.
On the website it never said anything about a farm code so maybe they didn't have one, but yes, it is a big problem that needs to be taken care of.
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