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Friday, June 20, 2008
Tomatoes are back. Are you biting?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tomatoes are back in many grocery stores and restaurants, often with signs saying that they’re from safe growing areas.
Many states and countries have been cleared, including Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and North Florida, which supply many of the tomatoes in supermarkets around Atlanta this time of year. I’ve bought big slicing tomatoes and served them over the past week or so. And I’ve missed the cut-up tomatoes on the salad bar at work, which is now stocked with grape tomatoes.
Still, it requires confidence in every step of the food chain to buy and eat a product that has been linked to a Salmonella outbreak that has sickened 552 people, nine of them in metro Atlanta, even when you’re assured it’s from a safe area. With supermarkets and restaurants on notice about what growing regions have been cleared — about four dozen at last count and listed on the FDA web site — many tomato lovers are paying attention to where the vegetable is grown before buying.
Demand is starting to pick back up in regions like North Florida, but probably won’t be back to normal levels until federal authorities decide the outbreak has ended, says Mike Stuart, president of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association. That may come too late for his growers, who will probably wrap up their season after the first week of July. He hasn’t totaled the losses yet, but they’re expected to be extensive, affecting not just farmers, but packing houses, those who transport tomatoes, farm workers and others. Georgia farmers are also seeing more of a demand after an initial slump in orders, according to Charles Hall of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association.
The produce industry wants things to get back to normal. Stuart says he was encouraged to see the big quick-service restaurants come back to tomatoes quickly — McDonald’s, Burger King and Yum Brand nameplates like Taco Bell are serving them again. He’s hoping consumers take a cue from that and feel comfortable ordering and eating tomatoes again.
But as the number of cases keeps rising, that may not happen so easily. Federal investigators are tracing the path of tomatoes between a cluster of illnesses in Chicago and farms in Mexico and Florida, starting this weekend. They’ll be looking at distribution centers, packing sheds and farms, searching for signs of what might have caused the illnesses. It’s conceivable that the source of contamination could still be out there, says David Acheson, the FDA’s association commissioner for food.
So is it safe to eat tomatoes? Cherry and grape tomatoes, and those sold on the vine, have not been implicated in the outbreak and are OK to eat from any growing region, the FDA says. And round red tomatoes, Roma and plum tomatoes from cleared regions are also OK, according to the FDA. (You can read more advice about choosing tomatoes and handling them properly on web sites from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FDA.)
Federal authorities consider the outbreak to be ongoing. Cases have turned up as recently as June 10, several days after a nationwide warning against eating round red tomatoes, Roma and plum tomatoes from suspect growing regions. There’s about a two-week lag in matching illnesses to the outbreak strain of Salmonella Saintpaul. The CDC has heard of illnesses that started after June 10, but are still waiting on lab matches to see if they’re part of this outbreak.
Tomatoes are especially difficult to trace, because when they’re picked and packed, they’re frequently mingled with produce from other farms, to match sizes and stages of ripeness in boxes. They may go through many hands before reaching a home or restaurant kitchen. Investigators have to trace every step of that journey in looking for possible contamination.
Did you stop buying tomatoes after the FDA warning? Have you started ordering them again at restaurants, or using them at home? If you are buying them, do you look to see where they were grown?
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