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Claim: Bananas imported from Costa Rica are infected with the "flesh-eating disease" known as necrotizing fasciitis.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, 1999]
Origins: The 
above-quoted hoax began circulating on the Internet in December 1999. In June 2001, some further hoaxster thought to translate it into French, change a few details to make it appear both current and local, and set it loose in Quebec. The newer version tells readers that 15,000 Quebecers will die within two weeks if they've eaten Costa Rican bananas, and it's every bit as false as the original.
Most health scare warnings fit into one of two categories: misinformation spread by sincere (but misguided) individuals who are trying to do the right thing by passing along important notices, and deliberately concocted lies and distortions spread by those who seek to profit by scaring consumers into buying their products. Once in a while we come across warnings such as this one, however — warnings so far off the mark (and with no obvious profit motive) that they can't be classified as anything other than malicious hoaxes. (Assuming, of course, that this warning wasn't started by someone in a banana-growing country that competes with Costa Rica in the U.S.
Necrotizing fasciitis is also known as the "flesh-eating disease," a term that became familiar to many Americans after outbreaks of this previously rare affliction occurred in England, Canada, and the USA in the 1990s. (The most prominent victim of necrotizing fasciitis was Lucien Bouchard, then the leader of Canada's Bloc Quebecois Party, whose left leg was amputated after he contracted the disease in 1993.) Necrotizing fasciitis is a bacterial infection caused when some forms of streptococcus bacteria enter a body (usually through a cut or a scratch) and spread throughout the skin and subcutaneous tissues, destroying the flesh in the process. What little medical information this warning has to offer is specious. The Costa Rican city of Cartago did experience an outbreak of necrotizing fasciitis during the summer of 1999, but nothing else here rings true. No reports of necrotizing fasciitis' (or any other disease's) "decimating" the monkey population of Costa Rica have come to light; the notion of bacteria "grafting" themselves to banana skins (rather than living on, living in, or feeding off banana skins) is a curious one; anyone familiar with necrotizing faciitis would talk about the bacteria that cause the disease The caution that one "is advised not to purchase Bananas for the next three weeks as this is the period of time for which bananas that have been shipped to the US with the possibility of carrying this disease" is also difficult to make sense of. Does it mean that the disease has been stopped, but American consumers should avoid buying Costa Rican bananas for the next three weeks because that's how long it will be before all the pre-stoppage bananas are out of the pipeline (and grocery stores)? If so, how was the disease stopped? Why should subsequent shipments of bananas from Costa Rica be considered safe? (And when the heck did this three-week period begin, anyway?) Of course, there is no "Manheim Research Institute" (any organization bearing that name would likely be spelled "Mannheim," and although there is a Mannheim University in Germany, it does not have a research institute that would be involved in the study of diseases or bacteria), and the Centers for Disease Control, rather than the FDA, would be the proper governmental agency to deal with this type of occurrence. (Later hoaxsters have tried to address this flaw by tacking a "This has been verified by the Center for Disease Control" [sic] line at the beginning of the message and repeating the name "Center for Disease Control" [sic] under "Manheim Research Institute"). Because the Centers for Disease Control has been inundated with calls about this scare, it has set up a special banana hotline to ease consumers' minds. The number is This piece seems to be a twist on the usual "beware of shipments from foreign places" legend type, although the usual agents of death in those tales are venomous creatures (such as snakes, spiders, and insects) who become stowaways when the crates of fruit are shipped to the USA and then emerge to attack unsuspecting grocery shoppers. The giveaway that screams "legend" here is the tired bugaboo about a government agency's endangering lives by keeping quiet about a potential danger instead of moving to protect the population it's supposed to serve. In this case we don't even get the usual tale about "powerful banana interests" using their economic clout to bribe government officials and prevent news of the epidemic from reaching the public and causing banana sales (and banana profits) to plummet. Nah, this time we're proffered the old "we don't want to create a panic" and "several thousand deaths is an 'acceptable number'" excuses. One has to wonder how someone determined that 15,000 lives could "acceptably" be sacrificed in order to avoid a "nationwide panic." Do they really expect the public to remain calm if only 12,000 people suddenly come down with necrotizing fasciitis? Additional information:
Last updated: 30 December 2005 Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2009 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson. This material may not be reproduced without permission. snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com.  Sources:
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