Listeria outbreak devastates Calif. cantaloupes

MENDOTA, Calif. (AP) — On an October day in the midst of harvest season, two farmworkers sat idly in their home in a Central California town that touts itself as "the cantaloupe center of the world."

Instead of picking the melons and supervising a work crew, Dora and David Elias of Mendota were unemployed — laid off along with hundreds of others as the cantaloupe listeria outbreak traced to Colorado rippled across the nation.

The pangs were particularly felt here in the top cantaloupe-producing state. Sales of California cantaloupes plummeted, even though their fruit was perfectly safe to eat. Farmers abandoned fields. Farmworkers lost jobs.

"We can't sell the fruit," said Rodney Van Bebber, sales manager for Mendota-based Pappas Produce Company. "Retail stores are taking cantaloupes off the shelves, and growers are disking in their fruit because people are afraid to eat them."

Federal officials quickly isolated the contamination to Jensen Farms in the Colorado town of Holly, which recalled its cantaloupes in mid-September. The tainted cantaloupes should be out of stores now because their shelf life is about two weeks.

But the number of deaths has continued to grow because symptoms of listeria can take up to two months to appear. As of Wednesday, the outbreak was linked to 23 deaths and 116 sicknesses, making it the deadliest known outbreak of foodborne illness in the U.S. in more than 25 years.
Source:Yahoo