Anonymous Monk,
Assuming there are no imbedded commas:

my %pal;
while ( <FILE> ) {
    chomp;
    my ($key, $val) = split /,/ , $_, 2;
    $pal{$key} = $val;
    if ( $val eq $my_item ) {
        # some code
    }
}
[download]

Cheers - L~R

Update Added code to address testing values secondary question