It's good to know that federal food safety officials have finally found the smoking pepper in the nation's worst food-borne illness outbreak in a decade. But the haphazard effort to trace the source of the summer's widespread sickness demonstrates the need for much tougher regulations for tracking potentially tainted produce.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided what it called a "smoking gun" Wednesday for the nationwide salmonella outbreak. It was caused by a batch of serrano peppers at a Mexican farm where contaminated water was used to irrigate the crop. Both the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration advised consumers to avoid raw serrano and jalapeno peppers from Mexico.

The warning comes weeks after food safety officials originally targeted tomatoes as the source of the illness that has infected 1,300 across the country. Fears about tainted tomatoes have prompted growers to plow their crops under and throw away millions of tons of produce ready to be taken to market. Industry representatives told a congressional hearing Wednesday they have lost $300 million because of the erroneous warnings.

Indicating that mixed messages continue, federal officials contended Wednesday they still haven't ruled out tomatoes, saying it is possible the outbreak will eventually be linked to different kinds of contaminated produce. But the FDA lifted its warning about raw tomatoes June 17, about the same time it discovered a genetic link to tainted jalapeno peppers in Mexico.

Congressional critics were quick to pounce on the FDA and CDC for their handling of the investigation. "You could describe our current food safety system as 'outbreak roulette,' " said Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.), chairman of the subcommittee holding the hearing.

That's a fair assessment. The monitoring process for tracing food-borne illness, especially in produce, simply doesn't work. The industry shares as much of the blame as Congress. For decades the industry has contended it can monitor itself, but this summer's outbreak shows the need for a centralized food-tracking system.

The current rules require food processors and distributors to keep track of where food goes and where it comes from —- but for only one step on each side of the supply chain. The rules do not apply to farms or restaurants.

Nor is there a computerized system to keep track of the supply. Most records are still kept on paper, which means that investigators often have to rifle through files in multiple locations. As bad as that sounds, the system is still better than it was 20 years ago.

But there remains a checkerboard of state and local health department rules for tracking food-borne illnesses, which means tracing a nationwide outbreak can be alarmingly slow. This latest salmonella outbreak was a real-time test of the system, and the results were ugly; people were still eating contaminated peppers in early July, after some state and local health departments had evidence they were the true source. Meanwhile, tomato crops were still being destroyed.

Growers and distributors know now that something has to change.

"The industry is realizing, based on this outbreak, that we need to have the ability to trace back so that we can segregate where the problem is and not devastate the entire industry," said Mike Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia.

Four years ago, the Bush administration and industry lobbyists successfully thwarted a plan to toughen regulations on tracing food supplies as part of the nation's new bioterrorism laws. They complained that detailed recordkeeping and monitoring would be too cumbersome and costly.

That's why Congress must step up to the food-safety plate now. It needs to pass comprehensive legislation that requires better oversight of food-safety plans by both producers and distributors and gives the FDA more authority to investigate and recall tainted products.

Rewriting food-safety legislation should also require the FDA and the Department of Agriculture, which carries much of the burden on the issue, to establish a centralized system to trace food products accurately and quickly.

The salmonella outbreak of 2008 has revealed just how seriously flawed the current system is. The public is demanding action. Both the industry and Congress should provide it.

—- Mike King, for the editorial board (mking@ajc.com)