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WASHINGTON (CAP) - Reports of salmonella-tainted tomatoes in 23 states have forced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to raise the threat level for eating vegetables in this country to red, the highest it's ever reached in the history of the rating system.
Rather than waste time and funding actually enforcing federal food handling regulations, the FDA decided (and, honestly, this was news to us this week) in 2003 to institute a color-coded rating system to let consumers know how safe their vegetables are - that is, when that bite of a bell pepper or carrot stick could be their last.
According to the FDA, during the "Oh my! E. coli" bagged spinach incidents in 2006, it moved the threat level up to orange, which signifies that the nation's vegetables are "only going to kill you if you're already sick, we're guessing. Expect a 3-4 day hospital stay. at most."
Since last summer, the nation has been holding steady at yellow, which stands for "Yeah, go ahead. They're probably alright."

According to the FDA website, the red level desingation means the country's vegetables are "bad, and will make you violently ill, but they're not Ebola-bad or anything (except tomatoes, they could be)."
Clearly, the threat level change - and the threat rating system itself - has shocked many Americans. And reports out of Mesa, Ariz. yesterday that a man's ass may have fallen off after eating a bag of mixed cauliflower and broccoli has folks in the Southwest skipping the vegetable section at grocery stores altogether.
"We've been telling parents this for years," said 4 1/2-year-old Freddy McMichael, a spokesman for Toddler's United, a toddler think tank in Washington. "Vegetables are evil. No good. Period. On behalf of TU, I would like to tell parents and teachers what they can do with those baby carrots..."
Government officials say they're close to tracking the source of the tainted tomatoes, but they aren't sure if it's a packing-place problem or a farm problem. Sources close to the investigation told CAP News that they aren't sure anyone in the FDA's food "protection" department knows what a "packing place" is and they're pretty sure that none of them have ever been to a "farm" - even as kids.
On its website yesterday, the FDA assured Americans that vegetables at fast food restaurants are completely safe: "All of the tomatoes, pickles, onions, lettuce, and so on, that you find on your burgers and specialty sandwiches were artificially created in a lab in Little Rock, Ark. We just found out about this practice two days ago, but, nontheless, we're relieved."
Contributing Writer
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