PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — The case of the contaminated cucumbers has taken a turn.
The Florida Department of Agriculture (FDOA) called the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) tracing of a salmonella outbreak to a local grower "at best inaccurate, and at worst misleading."
The FDA announced this week that cucumbers from Bedner Growers "are a likely source of illnesses in the outbreak,"
The federal agency said it took soil and water samples from a farm where the cucumbers were grown, but the agency would not tell WPTV the location.
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"I have a hard time believing that any farming operation in Florida, South Florida today, would be having an issue with salmonella that was in a canal water system that was able to get to a crop," said state Rep. Rick Roth, who is also a vegetable farmer in Palm Beach County.
Roth is skeptical of the FDA's findings and so is the head of food safety at the FDOA, who told the FDA in an email "We find the science inaccurate, unsubstantiated and unnecessarily damaging to the firm implicated."
The food safety head also said in the email that the report "serves to confuse consumers."
The contaminated cucumbers are blamed for making nearly 450 people sick in 31 states.
Roth takes issue with Bedner Growers being the only operation named even though the FDA said Bedner's cucumbers do not account for all illnesses in the outbreak.
"I think they rushed to judgment faster than normal, which makes it very suspect," Roth said.
According to the FDA's report, "traceback information (showed) Bedner Growers ... supplied cucumbers to multiple points of service where ill people reported purchasing or eating cucumbers."
The FDA said the salmonella danger is over since all of the harvested cucumbers by the Palm Beach County grower have been off store shelves for a while.