TOMATO RECALL LATEST: NEW YORK CITY GETS POISONED

New York City health officials Wednesday said That there have been six more cases of salmonella poisoning caused by the tainted tomatoes reported in New York City.
They have been added to one previously reported case in New York, The New York Times said.

The new latest cases came as the head of U.S. food safety efforts said it's possible the government will never track down the source of the outbreak. David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's "food safety czar," says that's because fresh produce like tomatoes aren't consistently labeled as to origin, and also because the outbreak, which sickened more than 277 people and hospitalized 43, is so widespread.

Sickness blamed on salmonella-tainted tomatoes jumped to 228 cases Friday with six new states added, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The CDC found 61 new cases of Salmonella Saintpaul infection in Florida, Georgia, Missouri, New York, Tennessee and Vermont. That brings to 23 the number of states in which infections have been confirmed since mid-April, CNN reported.

Acheson said that definitively pinning down where the bacteria originated may be impossible because, unlike jars of peanut butter, which were also subjects of an outbreak, individual tomatoes typically don't have information about their origins.

"Off of that jar of peanut butter, you've got the history of that product," Acheson said, adding that even though some U.S. growers voluntarily identify boxes of their products, tracking a suspect batch is very difficult.

The FDA used harvest schedules in a process of elimination to narrow down their suspicions to southern Florida or Mexico. Tomato Recall Whos Not Affected--Tomato Recall What You Need To Know