The Texas firm also distributes tomatillos, a small, green, husked tomato-like fruit.
Acheson said the facility was targeted for testing after the FDA traced one cluster of illness. "We are working back from a population of patients who got sick in a single geographic area that ate in a single place," he said.
"We asked where peppers linked to that cluster came from."
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who chairs the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Foresty Committee, said the FDA needs better techniques for tracing food to its source.
"This is far too long for an outbreak to spread unresolved and it is unacceptable for public health, farmers and the food and produce industry," Harkin said in a statement.
Acheson said the investigation of this outbreak is the most complex he has ever worked on.
Food safety experts say it has been especially difficult because people had trouble recalling what they had eaten before they became ill, and the products indicated, such as fresh tomatoes and peppers, had all been discarded by the time inspectors could follow up.
Salmonella poisoning, which causes diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps is very common, with 40,000 cases and 400 deaths each year in the United States alone.
