no one eats them?

imagine: i was sitting at dfw airport on monday, waiting for my plane, watching cnn, which was reporting on the salmonella-tomato debacle. almost 400 people were sickened in 27 states and the fda has no idea how this happened, or from where the bacteria came. and the woman sitting next to me turns to her boyfriend/husband/male person and says, "well, no one eats tomatoes anyhow." i really thought that she was making an attempt at irony, but they launched into this conversation about how it's not that many people, no one eats tomatoes, only one person is dead. blahblahblahblahblah

it's a lot of people. and we've had a variety of "tainted" foods with the bush administration. the beef and meat by-products that went to the school kids and elderly? the spinach? it's madness. how can we trust anything? and it's food. it's supposed to be safe and edible and good for you.

and the food and drug administration gives us this incredible information:

“We may not ultimately know the farm where these came from,” Dr. David Acheson, the agency’s associate commissioner for foods, told reporters in a conference call. “Some trace-backs that we thought were looking pretty good have been falling apart.”The tainted tomatoes were probably grown in Mexico or central or southern Florida, Dr. Acheson said. The agency is looking for the genetic fingerprint of the rare strain of salmonella responsible for the illnesses, tracing the tomatoes back through the supply chain.

Dr. Robert Tauxe of the disease centers said the process would require “finding someone who not only remembers what they had to eat and where they ate it, but someone who doesn’t have tomatoes more than once a day.” Dr. Tauxe added, “We do not think the outbreak is over.”

well, luckily, "no one eats tomatoes anyhow."