I originally wanted to make this post about a week ago but I’ve been too busy with other stuff to get to it, so I hope it doesn’t feel outdated right now but anyway…
At the time that I was originally contemplating this, news sources were reporting that there were about 800 cases of tomato-related salmonella. According to the CIA World Factbook the estimated population of the United States as of July 2008 is 303,824,646. It seemed to me that ~800 cases out of 300 million people is actually quite a small number of cases of salmonella, especially when you consider how many other potential sources there could be. Chicken, anyone?
In the midst of all this hub-bub regarding tomato-related salmonella, and all the economic disruption and inconvenience that it has caused, one thing I began to wonder and the one piece of relevant information I could not find in any reports on the subject was this: How many cases of salmonella do we really get in an average year?