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Honduras slams US moves against tainted cantaloupes

"It's unjust that the [US] has declared a unilateral health alert without any laboratory or clinical tests."

Manuel Zelaya, Honduran president

The president of Honduras on Sunday dismissed as "unjust" a US alert urging consumers to discard Honduran cantaloupes after a salmonella outbreak sickened 59, saying the US presented no evidence that the bacteria originated in his country.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Saturday warned grocers to remove melons shipped by the Honduran company Agropecuaria Montelibano from their stock and suggested shoppers check with stores to see where recently purchased melons came from. It is also seeking to hold the company's future cantaloupe shipments to the US.

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya called the move "extreme and imprudent," noting that the melons were contaminated on their peel, not inside, meaning they may have come in contact with salmonella bacteria after they were shipped.

"It's unjust that the [US] has declared a unilateral health alert without any laboratory or clinical tests," he said.

Trade Minister Fredys Cerrato meanwhile called for the FDA to release details of studies it performed on the tainted cantaloupe to prove it was in fact from Honduras -- where there has been no corresponding outbreak of salmonella.

"This is causing us direct economic damage," Cerrato told CNN en Espanol on Sunday, noting that 5,000 Hondurans work processing melon, part of a US$100 million industry centered around the country's southern Pacific coast.

Honduran agriculture experts were to meet with FDA officials in Washington yesterday, he said, warning that the US will have to compensate Agropecuaria Montelibano for its losses should the contaminated fruit be found to have other origins.

Fifty people in 16 states and nine others in Canada have fallen sick after eating tainted cantaloupes. No deaths have been reported, although 14 people have been hospitalized, the FDA said.

Symptoms of food-borne salmonella include nausea, vomiting, fever, diarrhea and abdominal cramps.

The 16 states that have reported illnesses from the melons are Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin.

The FDA said it was continuing to investigate the outbreak with the states and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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