Mexico criticizes US salmonella findings

By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO, Associated Press Writer
Thu Jul 31, 7:14 PM ET

Mexican agriculture officials said Thursday that U.S. colleagues hunting for the source of a salmonella outbreak are rushing to a conclusion about finding the strain at a Mexican pepper farm.

The salmonella sample that one U.S. official called "a smoking gun" was taken from a water tank that had not been used for more than two months to irrigate crops, said the director of Mexico's Farm Food Quality Service, Enrique Sanchez.

Sanchez told a news conference on Thursday that the tank held rain water and suggested that roaming cattle or other factors could have recently contaminated the tank with the same strain of salmonella that has sickened 1,300 people in the United States since June.

On Wednesday, Dr. David Acheson, the food safety chief for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, described the finding of the salmonella strain at a farm in the northern state of Nuevo Leon as a key breakthrough in the case.

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

Sanchez said the U.S. officials "totally lacked scientific evidence" to make such statements and said they had broken a confidentiality agreement by announcing findings before their investigation is complete.

"We're eating this same produce in Mexico and we haven't had any problems," Sanchez said.

He suggested the FDA officials confused the source of the samples because the tainted water was found on a farm in the Tamaulipas state municipality of Hidalgo — not in Nuevo Leon as the FDA reported.

The FDA issued a statement later Thursday saying it was "surprised and disappointed" the Mexican response.

"We are confident of our findings," the statement said. "FDA's analytical methods are publicly available."

Some US farms outsourced to Mexico

By JESSICA BERNSTEINWAX,Associated Press Writer AP - Tuesday, May 27

IRAPUATO, Mexico - Antonio Martinez used to pay smugglers thousands of dollars each year to sneak him into the United States to manage farm crews. Now, the work comes to him.

Supervising lettuce pickers in central Mexico, Martinez earns just half of the $1,100 a week he made in the U.S. But the job has its advantages, including working without fear of immigration raids.

Martinez, now a legal employee of U.S.-owned VegPacker de Mexico, is exactly the kind of worker more American farm companies are seeking. Many have moved their fields to Mexico, where they can find qualified people, often with U.S. experience, who can't be deported.

"Because I never moved my family to the U.S., I was always alone there," said Martinez, 45, who could never get a work permit, even after 16 years in agriculture in California and Arizona. "When I got the opportunity to be close to my family, doing similar work, I didn't even have to think about it."

American companies now farm more than 45,000 acres of land in three Mexican states, employing about 11,000 people, a 2007 survey by the U.S. farm group Western Growers shows.

There were no earlier studies to document how much the acreage has grown. But U.S. direct investment in Mexican agriculture, which includes both American companies moving their operations to Mexico and setting up Mexican partnerships, has swelled sevenfold to $60 million since 2000, Mexico's Economy Department told The Associated Press.