FDA Says Ditch the Onions
Do you have onions in your kitchen? Yeah, me too. Popular quiz: Which farm or supplier did this bow get from? If you can’t answer this question, you should probably throw it away.
On July 31, the FDA and CDC announced that they have traced the Salmonella outbreak in red onions to one “likely source”: California-based supplier Thomson International Inc.
To find out more about the products to keep close at hand, watch the video below:
If you remember the reviews of romaine lettuce in 2018 and 2019, the next part will sound familiar to you: throw away the red, yellow, white, or sweet onions unless you are sure they are not from Thomson International. So far, the outbreak has affected people in 11 states .
So if you’ve grown your onions yourself, or if your grocery store specifically says it’s a Pennsylvania onion, or if your onion still has a sticker saying where it comes from, they’re safe. In any other case, the FDA recommends playing it safe.
Salmonella dies during the cooking process, so if you’ve already eaten the onion but cooked it first, you should probably be fine. But we usually don’t process onions the way we do raw meat in an effort to avoid contamination, so if you have a suspicious onion, I would just throw it away. Definitely don’t eat it raw, even if you’re sure you’ve already eaten a little and you’re fine.
Sometimes salmonella starts to cause nausea a few days after ingestion; The CDC specifies an incubation period of 6 to 72 hours . If you think you are sick, the CDC advises you to seek medical attention and write down everything you remember when you ate before you got sick. You or your doctor should report your case to your local health department and someone will probably call you to ask what you ate the week before you got sick. Similar to contact tracing, this process helps figure out how the outbreak is spreading, and your responses can help prevent others from getting sick.