Wait! Don’t carve that pumpkin! Haven’t you heard? The newest Halloween horror isn’t gummies, goblins, or razor blades in apples. (Who still even gives out apples?) It’s salmonella from pumpkins.
If that seems made-up, it’s not. In East Texas, a 4-month-old girl participated in her day care’s “seasonal activity” of putting pumpkin guts in a plastic bag. The next day, she started vomiting, and by noon, she was admitted to the hospital. She had a very rough time of it, but thankfully recovered and is fine.
Her mom took to social media to tell others. She wasn’t fearmongering, just shocked. But pretty soon, salmonella fears were spreading like a fecal-orally transmitted infectious disease. Then came the calls to ban pumpkin-carving for kids. Even though this awful thing happened . . . one time. In one place. In a country of 343 million people—and about 1.5 billion pounds of annual pumpkin production, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“I called my sister’s father-in-law, who is an infectious-disease doctor,” said Jessica Hochman, a Los Angeles pediatrician I checked in with. “He’s worked at Cedars-Sinai for over 40 years, and he’s never seen salmonella from a pumpkin.” (Neither, for the record, has she.)
So why the panic?
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