Health officials are expanding their investigation beyond tomatoes and into other produce as they search for the source of a salmonella outbreak that now has sickened 869 people over nearly three months.
As reports of victims continue to grow across 36 states, long after many tomato producers finished harvesting, officials at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters in a conference call Tuesday that they were recruiting more labs to help look deeper into the matter as well as at produce commonly served with the fruit.
They refused to specify what other produce.
The most recent onset of infection was June 20, said Robert Tauxe of the CDC, and at least 179 people became ill on June 1 or later.
But health officials are staying tight-lipped about where the victims are from and what they ate, saying only that they were examining several clusters of cases and that more than half of the reported cases have been in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
Tomatoes are still the lead suspect, as case studies have shown that 80 percent of victims reported eating the fruit, Tauxe said.
“Tomatoes aren’t off the hook,” said David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods for the FDA. But the culprit’s trail is convoluted, and the pace of tracking “has been frustratingly slow,” he said.
Investigators are combing through the entire distribution chain for tomatoes and are weighing multiple scenarios, including a shared water source at one or more farms — or a common packing site — that could have contaminated the fruit.
