NM chile growers feel burned
Jalapeño harvest begins next week after the recent Salmonella epidemic
New Mexico jalapeño farmers are beginning to harvest their crops this week, and although the recent Salmonella scare pinpointed the cause as Mexican-grown peppers, local growers and processors are feeling bruised and anxious after a rough few months.
“When FDA limited the warning about jalapeños to exclude domestic growers, New Mexico jalapeño farmers may have avoided a potentially major crisis,” says Gene Baca, president of the New Mexico Chile Association. But he says local growers aren’t in the clear yet. “The tomato and spinach industries saw long-lasting effects from the warnings that affected them. We hope we don’t see the same with the jalapeño industry.”
At Deming-based Border Foods, the country’s largest jalapeño processor, Agriculture Manager Dave Layton buys the majority of New Mexico’s jalapeños. The crop this year looks good, he says, but the Salmonella outbreak has been a headache—and the government hasn't been helping.
"I don’t think they’ve handled it really well," he says bluntly. "First they went after tomatoes, and hurt the tomato industry really bad. Then to start doing the same thing with peppers? To go at it without knowing for sure? I mean, my family eats this food too, so I understand they're just trying to protect us..."
The New Mexico Department of Health detected the first cases from this outbreak in late May and began an investigation. According to deputy state epidemiologist Dr. Michael Landen, the department's initial study, completed earlier this summer, showed a strong association with raw tomatoes. The department released that information and, as a result, the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration put out warnings about consuming raw tomatoes in New Mexico and Texas.
Dr. Landon says if the authorities had waited to release the information, more people would have become ill. "If you look at the epidemic curve—the number of cases each day during the outbreak—there’s a drop-off in cases after the announcement was made. So can we prove that because we announced tomatoes it was tomatoes? No, we can’t prove that. Did we make a mistake by announcing it? No, I would say we did not. As public health officials we are obligated, when we have a strong concern, to get the word out."
But that's little comfort to local growers and processors. "The problem with produce warnings is that all growers were impacted, regardless of the quality of their product and their location," Baca says. "The warnings cast a shadow on all products involved, regardless of the source or the likelihood that they are not the source of the problem."
After their initial findings, investigators from the N.M. Department of Health, CDC and Indian Health Service continued to monitor the outbreak, track cases and test specimens of tomatoes and other food items. Researchers went back into the field, traveling around New Mexico for more than a week, re-interviewing some of the more than 100 people sickened by the virus.
"When you interview somebody a month after they've eaten a meal, many people don't remember exactly what they ate," Landen explains. "The other issue is if you say, 'Did you have a hot pepper or a tomato' that's OK, but some people may not understand the differences between Roma tomatoes and round tomatoes or jalapeños and serranos."
So the second time around, interviewers used props. They showed people examples of tomatoes and peppers. The results of that study, which are expected to be released next week, may help shed light on how and why so many were sickened.
The FDA said last week that a sample of serrano pepper and a sample of irrigation water from a Mexican farm both contained the strain of Salmonella Saintpaul that was responsible for the current outbreak.
Because most of the state's peppers will be cooked before reaching the table—nearly eliminating any possibility of salmonella—consumers should feel safe eating locally grown peppers. But Layton says processors are not immune from the effects of the scare.
“I had some people call me from Phoenix and say they saw on the news a picture of raw jalapeños next to canned jalapeños," Layton says. "When you have things like that on TV, the public gets confused. And we're concerned about public perception."
At Café Pasqual's, a Latin-American restaurant in Santa Fe, owner Katharine Kagel says the Salmonella outbreak has been "sort of a non-issue for us."
"I just asked a waiter how many inquiries he's had and he said only two," she says. Kagel believes that her customers were unworried because they know the restaurant buys mostly organic produce, which was not implicated in the scare.
The more likely scenario may be that consumers, pelted with months of conflicting reports, don't quite know what to do. Eddie Diaz, a Deming jalapeño grower who sells some of his peppers at a roadside stand, says says that there has been little concern among his customers, only a few of whom have asked, “Are these from the States?”
His prices have been a little higher so far this season because of increased demand for local peppers. Asked if that was one positive affect of the crisis, Diaz says, “For the Americans, yeah."
Some in the industry believe the fear of Salmonella in this case outweighs the relative risk. The "FDA could give an idea of how much risk there really is to eating an item such as fresh jalapeño or tomato, and equate that to risk we understand, such as dying in an auto accident or getting hit by lightening," Baca suggests. "Produce is grown outdoors, and in nature there are pathogens. As hard as we try, we will never eliminate all risk in raw produce, just as we will never eliminate the risk in life."
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