One of the lessons of 9/11 was supposed to be greater centralized management of intelligence to improve security in America. It would seem that the salmonella outbreak is proving how well the US government has learned and adapted to the challenge.

The the Associated Press reports that fingers are pointing all over the place, and the industries losing money want answers:

One agency probably zeroed in on tomatoes too early, the committee concluded, while a second failed to tap industry and states’ expertise in trying to trace the source of the contamination.

To the chairman, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., the case reminded him of “a Keystone Kops situation.” An investigation that should have taken hours or days instead has stretched on for weeks and months, he said.

This is just the detection side of things. Imagine if a TSA-like approach is used from now on for prevention…

Several lawmakers said the fact that no single agency is in charge may be part of the problem. The CDC is responsible for identifying the pathogen and the type of food that has been contaminated; the FDA is supposed to trace the outbreak to its source.

A single agency? Surely people can figure out how to collaborate? That is the message from outside the government as well:

Thomas Stenzel, president of the United Fresh Produce Association, suggested that public health officials might want to tap outside sources.

“We’re not asking to run the investigation, but there’s an abundance of knowledge in the industry that can help protect public health,” he said.

Not sure I would trust the UFPA, given how tasteless and uniform-looking the tomatoes are in America. Even so, they should certainly be allowed to assist with investigations. Collaboration is good. Compliance and governance is good. Too bad people have such a hard time working together on this.

Separately, the FDA rejected the Mexican government’s assertion that U.S. investigators had erred in identifying irrigation water at a Mexican pepper farm as a possible source of contamination. Mexican authorities said Thursday the sample their U.S. counterparts called “a smoking gun” came from a tank that had not been used to irrigate crops for more than two months.

Have to keep all this in mind the next time I speak about using centralized management and correlation tools. Federation of information is probably the better answer for massive data-sets spanning organizational boundaries.