Faceville — This was the year the money was going to roll in, the once-every-five-years crop that lets South Georgia tomato growers forget the tropical heat, ear-clogging gnats and fickle finances that worry them to no end.

"It was one of the best markets we ever had," said Greg Murray, who planted 84 acres with his brother at their farm near the Florida border.

Dan Chapman/dchapman@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Greg Murray of Faceville looks at his unpicked tomatoes. Speculation about tainted tomatoes causing salmonella proved unfounded, but it made the crop unmarketable. Financially devastated farmers fear the stigma may linger for years.

Dan Chapman/dchapman@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Employees of Virlon Brown's farm in Fowlstown prepare the tomato fields for the fall planting.

On June 2, they began picking shiny red, vine-ripened tomatoes. They earned $16.63, on average, per 25-pound box.

The next day, the federal government warned consumers not to eat raw, red tomatoes due to a salmonella outbreak. A week later, the Murrays received $13.61 per box.

It didn't matter that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had declared Georgia tomatoes salmonella-free. The damage was done. Consumers weren't biting — any tomatoes.

The Murrays earned $4.35 a box in late June. They let nearly half their tomato crop rot on the vine.

"This is just a shame what we left out here," Greg Murray said last week, hunched over a row of pocked, foul-smelling tomatoes roasting in the summer sun.

Farmers nationwide are lambasting the FDA and the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the time they took — six weeks — to identify perhaps the true salmonella culprit, jalapeño peppers. Federal officials say public health pre-empts profit.

Meanwhile, unsettled consumers are still avoiding tomatoes, a decision that has cost growers in the state $30 million, according to the University of Georgia.

Hearings will be held this week in Washington, D.C., as farmers beseech Congress for financial assistance to cover losses. And planting is under way in South Georgia for the fall tomato crop. But there's no guarantee shoppers will place a succulent Georgia tomato in their cart come November.

"Government and industry have got to make some changes that will restore consumer confidence so that consumers will come around and eat tomatoes again," said Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association.

'This was our chance'

Three hurricanes ravaged Florida four years ago, jacking up the price of undamaged Georgia tomatoes from $15 to $35 a box and rewarding Virlon Brown's risky decision to get into the business.

"But we haven't had a spring market in four years. It's been too cheap, at $2 or $3 a box," said Brown, 38. "This was our chance to really do something. I'd have made enough money that I could've retired."

In early June, as the harvest began, Brown expected to clear at least $5,000 per acre — a minimum $750,000 profit. Instead, more than half the crop died on the vine.

"I got salmonella-itis where salmonella kills your market," Brown said.

As of last week, according to the FDA and CDC, 1,284 people in 43 states, Washington, D.C., and Canada had been infected by Salmonella Saintpaul, a bacteria linked to feces. Two deaths have also been linked to the outbreak, which began in April. Forty Georgians have fallen ill.

The FDA targeted red plum, red Roma and round red tomatoes as the likely source of the salmonella. The news media played the tomato scare big. Within days of the warning, though, the CDC, which co-investigated the outbreak, exonerated Georgia, California and other tomato-growing states.

On July 17, the feds determined tomatoes were most likely not responsible for the salmonella. Instead, jalapeño peppers from Mexico appear the likely source.

The discovery offered little comfort to the nation's tomato growers.

"June for us is like Christmas for a department store — it's our best time of year," said Murray, 54, a fourth-generation farmer. "And this was a man-made disaster. It wasn't an act of God. I could take it if a hail storm destroyed my crop. But this just blindsided us."

Georgia, typically the nation's No. 3 tomato producer , behind Florida and California, averages $80 million in sales each year, according to UGA. Decatur County, in the southwest corner of the state, is Georgia's top tomato-growing county, home to one-third of the 6,000 tomato acres expected to be planted in the spring and fall.

Terry Kelley, a UGA extension horticulturalist, estimated last week that the salmonella scare cost farmers about three-fourths of their spring crop. Nationwide, losses are pegged at $200 million, according to the United Fresh Produce Association.

"The federal government caused every bit of this," Brown said. "They don't know how to trace it. We took our [beating]. Now it's time for the federal government to get theirs."

FDA's 'complex' response

FDA spokesman Mike Herndon defended the federal response to the salmonella scourge. Labeling the investigation "complex and difficult," Herndon said perishable tomatoes and jalapeños weren't always available for testing by the time investigators reached suspected restaurants, retailers, distributors or farms.

"The mission of both the FDA and CDC is to protect the U.S. public health," Herndon wrote in an e-mail. "Ultimately, it is the industry's legal and ethical responsibility to ensure the food they provide to consumers is safe, wholesome and free of contamination."

Hall, the growers' representative in Georgia, said farmers await federally mandated production and monitoring guidelines so untainted vegetables can be quickly exonerated during bacterial outbreaks.

"Then they could've contained the outbreak and been able to restore consumer confidence in tomatoes," Hall said.

Tomatoes are just the latest food implicated in the past few years. Tainted peanut butter (from Georgia), beef, green onions and spinach have all sickened consumers and tested the federal response.

Spinach sales lag 18 months later. Tomato farmers fear a similar backlash.

"I'll go into a grocery store and see housewives looking at tomatoes, but they can't tell if they're safe or not," Brown said. "Tomatoes still leave a bad taste in people's mouths."