You do know that these days you can pretty much get any incredient anywhere in the world? We have all the same spices in the big supermarkets in here too, imported from all over the world. Yes some people are not used to spicy food, but that is a differen thing. Food poisoning is the result of bad hygiene and contaminated food.
Ps. Went to culinary school and we studied a lot about safe food preparation, handling and storing.
I know that today we can have all the spices of the world in the supermarket, but the cuisine of Central and South America are much stronger spices, at least that's what several European friends told me when they tried Mexican and Brazilian foods.
Food poisoning is actually caused by lack of hygiene, but as I said, a good part of the Europeans who saw it go bad were actually due to not being accustomed to such temperate food, but obviously there are those who had food poisoning due to preparation problems .