Another salmonella scare -- now it’s sprouts

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Last year it was tomatoes and then peppers, peanuts and pistachios. Now it is alfalfa sprouts.

The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are warning people not to eatraw alfalfa sprouts because of salmonella contamination. The warning extends to sprout blends containing alfalfa sprouts, but other types of sprouts are still fine to eat, the federal agencies said.

Investigators believe seeds used to grow alfalfa may bethe source of the pathogen. That’s made the outbreak worse because suspect lots of seeds may have been sold around the country and could account for a large proportion of what’s being used by sprout growers.

Six states -- Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, and West Virginia -- have reported 31 cases of illness with the same outbreak strain of Salmonella Saintpaul. No deaths have been reported.

Some victims reported eating raw sprouts at restaurants, while others reported purchasing raw sprouts for home cooking. The first cases started to appearlast month, but the government is looking into whether this is actually the second phase of a larger outbreak. It could be related to Salmonella Saintpaul infections that occurred in Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, and Minnesota earlier this year. Those were also linked to raw alfalfa sprouts, and the pathogen strain was indistinguishable from the more recent cases.

-- Jerry Hirsch