Food Safety: Not the tomatoes

The latest salmonella scare is over. Now the question is what have we learned about our food safety system?

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration reported evidence to implicate jalapeno and Serrano peppers from a farm in Mexico as the source of the most recent salmonella epidemic.

"None of us can provide a cast-iron guarantee that salmonella Saintpaul will not re-emerge," Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's food safety chief, told The Associated Press. "We have not identified the total source of this."

Indeed, the first suspect, tomatoes were not exactly cleared. The government issued warnings that cost that industry some $250 million even without finding a single contaminated tomato. The most recent report calls it "weaker evidence."

However there's plenty of evidence that there must be a better food safety system in place. Steps could include more money for testing and identifying pathogens. It might be time to consider source marking, so that investigators have a way to track down dangerous food pathogens. (The case is even stronger for tracking animal production.)

As we said, this scare is over. It's time to really do something to guard food safety.