Animal (i.e. human) pathogens require animal tissue to replicate and maintain metabolic activity and existence alive.

Animal (i.e. human) pathogens also require the protection of animal tissue to shield them from cosmic energy and oxygen, the two lethal forces that destroy animal pathogens.

Vegetable matter (Vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains, seeds, legumes, sprouts, tubers etc.) fail to provide the nutrients and tactile environment required for any human /animal pathogen. 

Vegetation cannot stop the lethal energies (uv and/or cosmic particle and wave radiation) from passing through and (blasting) destroying the nuclei and or internal chemistry of animal viruses and animal bacteria. That is only provided by the animal tissue component: the cholesterol-protien matrix (as is presented only in skin, animal tissue cell envelops, ova, mucus, and milk).

In the research and pathology labs, only animal matter or animal matter containing mixtures can ever culture and maintain the viruses, bacteria or parasites that are the focus of investigation in human and animal disease. 

Fruit juice or vegetable soup is not found in any of my or my colleague's petri dishes, only in our lunch bags. And I never have found any microscopic animal viral or bacterial monsters looking back up at me though my microscope's lens, smiling viscously and just waiting for me to consume then in any of my (100% pure vegetarian) lunch samples smeared on my microscope's glass specimen examination slips! 

In over 27 years of CDC investigation, no living animal pathogen has been cultured and found capable of producing infection from non-animal tissue containing vegetable matter (Pure vegetarian foods)!

By JOE MANDAK
.c The Associated Press 

PITTSBURGH (AP) - The Food and Drug Administration has found no ``smoking gun'' that explains how green onions from Mexico became tainted, causing hepatitis A outbreaks in Pennsylvania, Tennessee and two other states, a top official told The Associated Press.

The FDA, however, is confident the onions that sickened hundreds and killed four were contaminated at four farms that have since been shut down by the Mexican government, said Jack Guzewich, director of emergency coordination and response in the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

None of the Mexican farms was linked to outbreaks in all four states, but onions from all four farms harvested late last summer were linked to outbreaks in at least two states, Guzewich said. Statistically, it's all but impossible for the onions to have been tainted after they left the farm because of the myriad routes the vegetables took in each case, he said.

The FDA has not yet issued a final report, but experts say it's still unclear what the agency should - or can - do to safeguard future Mexican green onion shipments.

``They kind of have to do something because it just is unacceptable for people to get sick and die from eating fresh vegetables,'' said Devon Zagory, senior vice president of Davis Fresh Technologies, a food safety consulting firm. ``But to target the whole (Mexican green onion) industry, that's a slippery slope to go down.''

At least 660 people were sickened in the Pennsylvania outbreak last year, including three who died, because of green onions served at a Chi-Chi's restaurant in Beaver County, Pa. That remains the largest single-source hepatitis A outbreak in U.S. history.

More than 300 people got sick in Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee from eating green onions at other restaurants.

There were 81 cases of hepatitis A reported in Tennessee among diners at a Knoxville O'Charley's restaurant. One man died after contracting the illness.

At least 10 people got the virus after eating at O'Charley's restaurants in Centerville and Macon, Ga.

Zagory said the hepatitis outbreak was different from salmonella outbreaks that prompted the FDA's 2-year-old ban on imported Mexican cantaloupes.

The cantaloupe ban will remain until the Mexican government agrees to food safety standards put forth by the FDA. Four Mexican growers have agreed privately to meet those standards and been allowed to export to the United States, but scores of others still can't, Zagory said.

The industrywide cantaloupe ban makes sense, Zagory said, because the FDA found traces of salmonella in Mexico. But hepatitis A can't be detected on onions or any other food at any stage from the farm to the consumer's mouth, so a ``broad brush'' remedy isn't wise in this case, Zagory and others said.

The FDA has banned only those four farms that grew the tainted onions - and the Mexican government has shut them down for the time being anyway. Mexico's other 22 green onion farms may still export to the United States, although Guzewich hopes Mexico will agree to stricter standards for onion growers after the FDA publishes its report on the outbreaks later this year.

Kathy Means, a vice president of the Produce Marketing Association in Newark, Del., agrees with the FDA's approach.

``People are eating green onions from these other (Mexican) suppliers and they're not getting sick, so clearly it's not a problem with all the green onions,'' Means said.

Mexican officials this week said there is no official verdict on where the problem began - a softer tone than their statements last year when officials called it ``impossible'' for the FDA to trace the tainted onions to Mexican farms.

``This situation worries us a lot,'' said Navarro Pulido, president of the Baja California Farming and Livestock Group. Gabriel Beltran, a state agriculture spokesman, said there was nothing new to say until the FDA's final report.

Because there's no way to trace the liver virus, the FDA did the next best thing - trace the origin of the onions that made people sick and determine whether a likely cause of the virus exists there, Zagory said. At each farm, the FDA found poor sanitation and inadequate hand washing facilities, two factors commonly linked to hepatitis A.

By the time FDA officials inspected the farms in December, the growing season was over, the fields were lying fallow and the workers had gone home, Guzewich said.

``We've gotten back to Mexico, we've gotten back to these four farms ... and I would be very surprised if we ever get more details than that,'' Guzewich said.

On the Net:

http://www.fda.gov 
 
 

04/02/04 16:23 EST