The spices grown in the western Gates range in India have already given rise to wars, fortunes and even the discovery of continents. In the past, pepper producers dried the seeds on bamboo mats or on the dirt floor and then collected them for manual threshing. Dirt, manure and salmonella were simply part of it for thousands of years, because the farmers harvested it in the same way, until now. So much so that in 1987, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) blocked the entry of Indian pepper shipments.
Science has shown that instead of promoting health, spices can make people very sick because of the way growers harvest, dry and thresh their spices.

In a study conducted on more than 20,000 food loads, the agency found that almost 7% of the lots of spices were contaminated with salmonella, twice the average of all other imported foods.
Every year, 1.2 million people in the US are infected with salmonella. More than 23,000 are hospitalized and 450 die.

Mexico and India had the largest plots of contaminated spices. About 14% of the Mexican samples contained salmonella, the study found. India ranked second, with 9 percent of its spices exported contaminated. But India exports nearly four times as much spice to the United States as Mexico, so its contamination problem is especially troubling.

Source: Jornal '' '' O Tempo '' '' http://www.otempo.com.br/