Posted on 11/21/2003 8:09:43 AM PST by Dane
It's not that they are consciously fertilizing with human waste, but that the water they are using to irrigate has human fecal matter in it.
Another thing is that Mexicans do not put their used toilet paper down the toilet, because there is not sufficient water pressure to push the paper down to the sewer. Therefore, they put their used toilet paper in the trash. When they come to the US, they think our plumbing systems are like theirs, and do the same as they do at home.
If you go to any public restroom frequented by large numbers of Mexican new arrivals, you're going to find the trash full of used TP. And this is the same restroom where the employees are going to the bathroom and washing their hands.
Not even remotely necessary to go to all that trouble. All that's needed to pass on the hepatitis virus is for a hepatitis carrier to NOT wash their hands after using the bathroom and then handle the onions. The hepatitis virus is VERY hardy, unlike the AIDS virus which is quite fragile.
From the information we know so far, the Hepatitis A infections seem to come from specific targets, i.e restaurants, where the green onions are delivered to.
It is easy to blame Mexican farming but looking at the facts, Mexican farms ship thousands of tons of green onions, if they were all infected, many more people would have gotten sick, and the infection couldn't be traced to a single source or restaurant.
JMO, it seems to be a targeted attack, either by a deranged individual or small scale terrorism.
Well from the PA health dept. it didn't come from any of the employees. They said that due to the appearance and timing of their symptoms, they were ruled out. Not my words, the PA health dept.'s.
So it basically goes down to the green onions, for the sake of "official" arguement. Again the question arises, why only one restaurant in a metropolitan area is the source of the Hepatitis A?
JMO, it was one deranged individual who infected the onions, with who knows what.
The term "deranged" would include someone who has decided to wage small scale terrorism and is a follower of islam.
The reason being that only one location(the Chi-Chi's) being the source of the infection. If a field of green onions in Mexico had been infected, common sense would tell you that many other restaurants would have been infected since all those green onions in that field did not go to one restaurant.
It is clearly not a Chi Chi's employee. In the past several months there have been 3 distinct outbreaks of Hepatitis A linked to green onions. One was in GA/NC, another in TN, and the third in PA. In all cases the virus was isolted and partially sequenced. The sequencing showed that all isolates from a given outbreak were identical and the three diferent sets of isolates were closely related to each other. A case control analysis indicated that the source was greeen onions, and the genetics of the virus indicated that although each strain was unique, each was closely related to a strain commonly found in Mexico as well as travelers returning from Mexico.
At the end of 1998, the same thing happened in Ohio. 43 patrons contracted Hepatitis A, it was traced to green onions, and the strain was closely related to a common Mexican strain.
These data suggest that the contamination is probably in Mexico, but very localized, so by the time the onions are served in restaurants, the contamination is fairly concentrated.
The Chi Chi's outbreak was large because they have a high volume (11,000 meals in Oct served at the one retaurant) and the vast majority of those infected at mild salsa during a three day period at the beginning of Oct.
However, some of the outliers (those affected very early or very late), may indicated a chronic low level infection that usually goes undetected (people do get hepatitis A, but either they don't know they are affected or have no idea that the infection came from food eaten a month earlier).
The chance that the Chi Chi's outbreak was linked to deliberate contamination by a Chi Chi's empolyee is very close to zero.
Thank you for clearing that up. I was just contending that if a whole field of green onions was being watered by say untreated sewage water, that the outbreak would be more widespread, since there would be thousands of pounds of green onions being shipped out from that contaminated field.
The Chi Chi's outbreak was large because they have a high volume (11,000 meals in Oct served at the one retaurant) and the vast majority of those infected at mild salsa during a three day period at the beginning of Oct.
I also read about the vast majority of the people getting sick ate the mild salsa, which would tell me that it was a small batch(say a carton) of green onions that were actually contaminated and that batch could have been contaminated any way down the supply chain, IMO.
The salsa question brings up another interesting question. Did the Beaver valley Chi-Chi's make their own salsa or is it canned(bottled)? If it is I wonder why they haven't called for a recall?
The hot salsa is bottled elsewhere, the mild salsa was made on site (with a shelf life of a few days). The mild salsa includes green onions. The contamination may have been limited to less than one small bunch on green onions.
The attack rate was very high. Since the salsa is served with free chips, most eat the salsa while waiting for their meals. The number of positives reported so far is 575, but I believe all or most were called in by local physicians, so there were probably many more who either developed mild symptoms or didn't go to the doctor because of insurance / convenience issues. The number infected was probably closer to 1000 than 500.
Since most infected dined at Chi Chi's during 3 days, which included a weekend, it seems likely that less than 2000 meals were served and some might prefer the hot salsa over the mild, so the attack rate may have been in excess of 50% for anyone eating mild salsa during the peak days.
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