Even I appreciate culinary diversity up to a point, but the news of a drug-resistant form of TB passed via cheese has made me rethink a plate piled with nachos.

This is a worrisome development, particularly since tuberculosis is normally spread through the air in droplets exhaled from infected lungs. A food-borne form of TB being is scary indeed, since any Mexican restaurant dish con queso can presumably carry the disease organism. The precise cheese is the fresh variety found in most Mexican food stores.

A rare form of tuberculosis caused by illegal, unpasteurized dairy products, including the popular queso fresco cheese, is rising among Hispanic immigrants in Southern California and raising fears about a resurgence of a strain all but eradicated in the U.S.

Cases of the Mycobacterium bovis strain of TB have increased in San Diego county, particularly among children who drink or eat dairy foods made from the milk of infected cattle, a study in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases shows.

But the germ can infect anyone who eats contaminated fresh cheeses sold by street vendors, smuggled across the Mexican border or produced by families who try to make a living selling so-called ”bathtub cheese” made in home tubs and backyard troughs.
[Tainted cheese fuels TB rise in California, MSNBC, June 4, 2008]

"Bathtub cheese"—another contribution to America's diversity brought by immigration chaos!

TB cheese is one more dangerous food product brought to America from Mexico, like the lead-contaminated candy that causes lowered IQ and poses a serious problem for Hispanic children who already do poorly in school on average.

Public health is further endangered by the foreign food workers who don't know enough about basic sanitation to wash their hands before handling chow.

I'll stick to home-made, thanks, and continue to avoid anything marked "Hecho in Mexico."