FDA reports potential harm in sprouts due to salmonella
There was a warning sent by the Food and Drug Administration this day and it was addressed to consumers to avoid alfalfa sprouts and spicy sprouts especially those that were grown in Urbana, Illinois farms. The reason for this is the possibility of salmonella.
The FDA said that they already have the preliminary investigation results and it has shown that Tiny Greens Organic Farm is somewhat behind the massive multistate outbreak of salmonella that was felt since November.
However, the owner of Tiny Greens, Bill Bagby, Jr. said that when the Illinois Department of Public Health checked his products from the samples collected, not a single sample was tested positive from salmonella contamination.
According to Kelly Jakubek who stands as the spokesperson for the state agency, the report showed negative results from the sprouts and seeds that have been collected by the IDPH. In addition, she said that they are still working closely with the CDC and FDA to investigate the issue further.
Tiny Greens is known all around the Chicago area for selling seeds and sprouts to farmers and markets.
Siobhan DeLancey, the spokesperson of FDA, said that her agency has not yet produced a positive result from the 200 samples from the Urbana business. She said that in cases like this, positive results from samples is not really what we like to see. She added that there is a strong epidemiological evidence to support this.
The said evidence started from interviews with people who were affected by salmonella. This was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From the conducted interview, almost 50 percent of interviewees were from Illinois, as the FDA reported. They said that they consumed a sandwich with sprouts from an outlet of Jimmy John’s. This was justified by the report of Chris Braden, the director of the Division of Foodborne, Waterborne and Environmental Diseases at CDC.
Bagby, the owner of Tiny Greens, said that he was deeply troubled by the consumer warnings of FDA. He wanted to know why the said salmonella outbreak is connected to his produce while in fact he did not distribute to the 15 states affected by salmonella. Bagby said, “They have only linked it to Jimmy John's, not to the thousands of pounds of retail sprouts I send out in four-ounce packages and yet they are still making me do a recall.”
However, Branded said that getting a positive result is very helpful but a negative one does not mean the products are not contaminated.