Montezuma’s Revenge, or ‘la campaña de disinformación’

That’s Spanglish, which I think roughly translates to “Something’s rotten, and it isn’t the tomatoes.”

I’ve made several trips to Mexico, and have been warned repeatedly to steer clear of any fresh produce while I’m there to avoid getting “Montezuma’s Revenge,” a nasty diarrhea that can spoil your trip. So I was literally shocked when during this latest salmonella scare, it was revealed that the tainted produce might possibly have been imported from Mexico…why on earth are we importing produce that we wouldn’t even consider eating while we’re down there? I thought.

Now we’re learning that the source of the salmonella poisoning that is making people sick is probably not tomatoes at all, but imported salsa. Now, the order of this discovery of events does not make sense to me. When people began to report their illnesses, would it stand to reason that they first discovered that the commonality among them was that they had eaten tomatoes, then later that all of the tomatoes happened to be in salsa? or that they had all eaten salsa…which contained tomatoes and several other ingredients? Obviously the latter.

So then the next question is why did we need to destroy this year’s American tomato crop over this, when the people researching this public health hazard had to have known that the problem was Mexican salsa…not tomatoes in general?

Even today, the FDA is cautioning against jumping to conclusions about the idea that that we’ve most likely been poisoned by our neighbors to the south:

‘We are not shutting down our borders’ to those products, said agency spokeswoman Stephanie Kwisnek today. ‘We are stepping up our testing of products grown domestically and from Mexico.’

Wouldn’t it have been nice if they had exercised this sort of caution before destroying so many American tomato growers, costing the American produce industry at least $100,000,000, and raising the cost of the fresh produce Americans need to stay healthy for at least a year? Heaven forbid we would profile the produce, right? Why does this whole thing remind me of our FAA insisting on body-cavity searching old ladies in wheelchairs simply to avoid offending skinny middle eastern men who want seatbelt extenders?

Why was it so important to avoid offending salsa importers? Is this really just another case of political correctness taken to a dangerous extreme?

It’s almost as if someone out there is bent on destroying the U.S. economy.