July 9, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Think of your favorite recipe for salsa. Three common ingredients now are suspects in the salmonella poisonings that have become the nation's largest food borne outbreak in at least a decade.

And therein lies the frustration. Seven weeks into their investigation, federal health officials aren't shortening the list of potential culprits, they're adding to it. Now jalapeno pepper producers are being probed alongside tomato distributors, and even fresh cilantro is under suspicion too.

It's quite a departure from the 2006 E. coli outbreak in spinach, a mystery solved in about two weeks.

There aren't as many spinach lovers as tomato lovers. The spinach consumers remembered eating came in bags, often still left in their refrigerators, bearing bar codes that were as good a clue as a fingerprint in helping investigators race to the very field that had been contaminated.

This time around, the suspects seldom are left over in the refrigerator or bear individual bar codes. Also, the victims are having a harder time remembering.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)