Ever Heard of Turistas UPDATE

It is called Montezuma's Revenge... and it is based in Mexico

Dr. David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's food safety chief, called the finding a key breakthrough in the case, as did another health official.

"We have a smoking gun, it appears," said Dr. Lonnie King who directs the center for foodborne illnesses at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Acheson said the farm is in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. Previously, the FDA had traced a contaminated jalapeno pepper to a farm in another part of Mexico.

Acheson and other officials were grilled at a congressional hearing about why the investigation originally focused on tomatoes.

The officials insisted that tomatoes still cannot be ruled out and that it is quite possible that the outbreak was caused by several different kinds of contaminated produce.

The outbreak has sickened more than 1,300 people since April.

'Smoking Gun' Found in Salmonella Case

posted: at AOL

filed under: National News Retrieved HERE today

Calling it a major breakthrough in the case, top federal health officials say a salmonella strain linked to a nationwide outbreak has been discovered in irrigation water and a Serrano pepper at a Mexican farm. The outbreak has sickened more than 1,300 people since April.

Tomatoes had been the prime suspect in the nationwide outbreak for weeks. But last week, the FDA said only jalapeno peppers grown in Mexico were implicated in the nationwide salmonella outbreak. The FDA said then it had found the same strain of salmonella responsible for the outbreak on a single Mexican-grown jalapeno in a south Texas produce warehouse.

If it turns out the tainted irrigation water was also used on tomatoes, it could provide some of the evidence that federal authorities are looking for to back their original focus on the fruit.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press 2008-07-30 15:01:55

______________________________See: Also 2004 [This is some serious shit]
Montezuma's revenge: how sanitation concerns may injure Mexico's tourist industry.

By Torres, Rebecca,Skillicorn, Paul
Publication: Cornell Hotel & Restaurant Administration Quarterly
Date: Saturday, May 1 2004

Whether the disease is termed "Delhi belly," as in India, or "Montezuma's revenge," as in Mexico, travel-related gastro-intestinal illness is an important issue to tourists visiting less-developed countries. Because of their concern about illness, many tourists avoid certain foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables. Similarly, hotel chefs often avoid purchasing locally produced foods because they believe that food to be unsanitary.

Unfortunately for local farmers, those are the products that local growers could best supply. That scenario creates a barrier that constrains possible links between the tourism industry's demand for food and local agricultural production. Yet such links may be exactly what is needed to reduce the incidence of traveler's dysentery.

Based on a 1997 survey of 615 Yucatan Peninsula tourists and 60 Cancun hotel chefs, nearly one-third of all tourists experience what they perceived to be food- or water-related gastro-intestinal illness. Tourists from the United States reported a significantly higher incidence of such illness than did those from other nations.

One source of food contamination that hotels must work on controlling is infections among kitchen workers--who often live in impoverished and squalid conditions. Rather than have each hotel operate in isolation, a better approach would be for alliances among hotels, restaurants, tourism workers, local suppliers, regional farmers, and regional and government entities... [please read on HERE]
Keywords: ...food; sanitation; traveler's diarrhea; health; tourism; agriculture; Mexico; Quintana Roo; Cancun