Have you heard about the Costa Rican bananas lurking in your grocery store, waiting to infect unwary consumers with the dreaded flesh-eating disease?
If you have, forget about it. The story making its way around the world on the internet is false.
“There is no truth to this,” said René Cardinal of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. “It is like an urban legend that just grows.”
When rumours first surfaced on the internet in January 2000, the inspection agency referred it to Health Canada for advice. Scientists concluded the bacteria that brings on necrotizing fasciitis, or flesh-eating disease, cannot be carried on bananas.
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“This information is in agreement with advice given by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centres for Disease Control and Prevention that the bacteria cannot survive long on the surface of a banana,” said an unusual statement issued by the Canadian agency to try to debunk the rumour.
Normally, the federal food inspection agency issues warnings about food safety problems, not the absence of them.
In fact, it says there is no evidence the disease can be transmitted by food.
But that has not stopped the rumour from spreading.
Cardinal said it circulated last year, died down and then resurfaced this spring in a French translation in Quebec, allegedly from the office of a Quebec City scientist although the office turned out to be fictitious. It was passed on to eastern Ontario, New Brunswick and France. From there, it has spread to the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain.
“These things are like chain letters,” said the agency official. “It will do a tour of the world.”
And it was causing panic.
Cardinal said the agency received “numerous calls” from nervous administrators and staff at day-care centres, hospitals and senior citizens’ homes.
“Clearly, this is a disease that frightens people and the thought that it could be passed on by eating a banana makes people very uneasy,” he said. “This is very common food for the young and the old.”
Will the agency be successful in killing the myth and stopping the misinformation?
“We’d like to think that,” Cardinal said. “Realistically, I expect we will bump into it again.”
