Health officials are well on their way to getting to the bottom of the salmonella situation; they have issued a warning to consumers to stay away only from Mexico-grown uncooked jalapeño and Serrano peppers.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made the warning modification after having traced peppers to certain farms in Mexico.

Among these farms there was one that also produces tomatoes, initially considered to be the source of the outbreak. It used to ship supplies to Agricola Zaragoza, a distributor in McAllen, Texas, where, at the beginning of the week, the FDA found a jalapeño pepper with the Saintpaul strain of salmonella.

For now, numerous samples have been collected and lab results are expected to soon come in and clarify things. David Acheson, the FDA's director of food safety, said investigators still don’t know whether or not the tomatoes from this farm are involved in the outbreak.

People can continue eating jalapeño and Serrano peppers, as long as they are domestically grown. According to FDA spokesman Michael Herndon, US grown peppers haven’t been connected to the salmonella outbreak that has sickened more than 1,200 US and Canada citizens.

About one week ago, all the types of tomatoes regarded as potentially dangerous (fresh Roma, red plum and vineless red round tomatoes) were cleared. However, during the almost forty days of tomato – targeting warnings, the food industry has recorded losses of more than $250 million.

Things may turn out the same with the newly suspected peppers. Many companies have already stopped shipping the vegetable as, with the very long tests the FDA performs on all the vegetable shipments coming in, most of them rot in warehouses before they can be commercialized.