Is the government hiding the source of the salmonella outbreaks?

Question

It has been said never shake hands with someone who lives in a culture where toilet paper is a luxury item. It is also said they should not pick your fruits and vegetables either. Spinach, Lettuce and now tomatoes showing up with salmonella. Then there are the meat packing plants with recalls due to botulism tainted meat. What both have in common are foreign workers who come from a culture where you don't drink the water. In fact federal law prohibits fruit or vegetables to be served at US schools picked just a few miles south of San Diego. I have watched vegetables in California being picked and also saw some of the workers urinate and defecate in the field. I saw no toilet paper and no hand washing and I am sure the rain helped the plants absorb the human waste (not good). So with my 40 minute observation yielding this why can't the government find the source of the salmonella and botulism outbreaks? Do they know and just do not want to offend an ethnic voting block regardless of public safety?

Answer 1

Do you really want the price of food to skyrocket when they kick out the Mexicans and have to start paying people minimum wage to pick it?

Answer 2

The government isn't hiding anything. It's in all the papers, as far as I am aware of, anyone that's picked up a paper in the last few days should be aware of the connection to people defecating in the fields (as well as the involvement of non-human animals and tainted fertilizer as well).

Just two days ago I read from my subscribed-to Chicago Tribune, right off the front page, that worker hygiene (and in plain black and white, defecation in the field), salmonella on surface of frogs entering growing fields, tainted slaughterhouse byproduct and animal waste that isn't treated and other animal waste (human and non human) is currently being investigated as possible sources of the contamination.

I absolutely believe you about workers going to the bathroom right in the field. They have to make a certain amount of output, and are often migrant workers that make miniscule wage and garner no benefits. They'd probably lose their job if they requested to leave the field to go to the restroom.

Not only that but cultural norms like what to do when one has to use the restroom vary. Have you ever seen Japanese toilets? I have, in person, even in my gorgeous hotel. They're just tiny little canoe-like channels in the ground and men and women alike have to squat to relieve themselves in the restroom, because it's considered the least strenuous and most natural position to use the restroom (as opposed to the sitting position Westerners have adopted). While here the idea of going to a beautiful public restroom and then squatting down over a tiny urinal sounds crazy, there the automatic toilet of the west (with it's spraying jets of water that fly up your exposed cooter) are disgusting and barbaric.

Likewise, maybe some people find nothing offensive about going to the bathroom in a field.

Frankly, it probably happens everywhere and all the time and is probably completely unpreventable, how could you possibly control and enforce the bathroom behavior of all the millions of people that come into contact with our food, whether in growth or transport? Being a kid, growing up in a rural farming area, I know as a fact that myself and all the kids in the area went to the bathroom in the corn fields and potato fields. If you're out all day there's nothing but fields anywhere you go, and if nature's calling, you answer it in nature.

I don't think there is any sort of a cover-up. In fact I have found that the salmonella contamination has been incredibly well investigated so far and well reported on, with very interesting and forward reports from government bodies. I think the only people I have spoken to that had no freaking idea about where the poisoning came from (or worse, who thought it must have naturally occured in the tomatoes - the ignorance!) didn't watch any "news" except TMZ.

Answer 3

Foreign workers are not greedy like us.  If you had to pick fruit or vegetables for a living you would want no less than $18.00-19.00 per hour.  Look at the price of that stuff now.  It would go up to 17.00 for a watermelon.

Also, if you have such a big problem with these outbreaks, you should grow your own vegetables.