According to the Los Angeles Times, Southern California grocery stores started to take measures on Tuesday and remove jalapeno peppers from their shelves.

The retailers’ actions come one day after they continued to keep the peppers on the market even after the Food and Drug Administration announced on Monday that the products could be connected to a national Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak. The move also emphasized the contradictory communications that the nation’s food safety association issues in such cases.

For instance, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, Albertsons assessed the original review from the FDA on Monday and presumed that since the source of the supposedly contaminated peppers was a food distributor in Texas which had not been used by the grocery chain, there was no reason of concern. However, later that day, it was noticed that the FDA had brought its website up to date and was now recommending consumers to avoid raw jalapeno and serrano peppers and other foods that contain them.

According to Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the tardiness in removing the products from stores is a result of the “limited authority of regulators to ensure food safety in the U.S.”

The nationwide outbreak of the infrequent Salmonella Saintpaul form has sickened thousands of people and caused the death of two in April. Regulators could not identify the source of the contamination. Nonetheless, the FDA initially warned against consuming tomatoes, the products which were suspected back then, but the agency has now canceled the warning.

The distribution plant where the contaminated jalapeno was discovered is owned by Agricola Zaragoza Inc. and is located in McAllen, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley.
The company declared that the produce was imported from Mexico and transported to Texas and Georgia.
Distribution of Agricola’s peppers has been put on hold while the FDA, the Texas Department of State Health Services and the company look closely into the matter.