It's safe to eat tomatoes again, officials at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said this afternoon. But jalapeños and serrano peppers may still be fueling an ongoing salmonella outbreak.

"We are lifting the tomato warning and we believe that consumers can now enjoy all types of fresh tomatoes," said Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's associate commissioner for foods.

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While tomatoes could still have caused the initial illnesses in the long-running outbreak, government investigators said Thursday they no longer have concerns about any that are currently on the market.

Acheson said officials are confident that because tomatoes have a limited shelf life that any that may have been involved in the early phases of the outbreak are no longer on the market.

The FDA has been under increasing pressure from the produce industry to lift its warning against tomatoes, with both Mexico and Florida growers petitioning the agency in the last week to change its advice. Checks of 1,700 samples taken from packing houses, warehouses and restaurants in June didn't turn up any sign of Salmonella Saintpaul bacteria. And virtually all of the tomatoes available on the market were grown in areas that the FDA had declared as safe.

Sales of field-grown round, red tomatoes and Roma tomatoes plummeted 46 percent in June at supermarkets, according to the Perishables Group, an Illinois-based market research firm.

Tomato growers are still counting their losses, but estimate them in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Melanie Horwath, office manager for Gonzales Packing in the Salinas Valley of California, said that demand for tomatoes dropped so low that on some weeks, their growers simply plowed under the crop.

"The government has undermined consumer confidence," Horwath said. "This is a travesty. This is a government-made disaster."

The official OK on tomatoes comes too late to save the year's first Georgia tomato crop. But for farmers trying to decide whether to put in a fall crop, the decision comes just in time, said Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fuit and Vegetable Growers Association.

"Overall it's good news," he said.

The state is tallying losses to tomato and jalapeño farmers, Hall said. Tomatoes, grown during two seasons in Georgia, are a $100 million annual crop.

The investigation's focus now is peppers, said Acheson, of the FDA. And U.S. food safety investigators are looking at the potential that multiple produce items may have contributed over time to the outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul.

"It's clear to us that tomatoes do not explain all the clusters," said Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the Division of Foodborne, Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The outbreak, the largest of foodborne disease in a decade, has sickened at least 1,220 people nationally, including at least 28 in Georgia. At least 224 people have been hospitalized, Tauxe said.

About 20 to 30 new cases of the outbreak strain continue to be reported each day, Tauxe said. But the outbreak appears to have been decreasing in intensity since mid June, he said.

"We still do not know where the original contamination point was and we're pushing as hard today as we were at the beginning," Acheson said.

The outbreak was initially linked to tomatoes, with federal investigators warning against eating raw round, red tomatoes, plum or Roma tomatoes.

Two weeks ago, investigators expanded the list of suspect produce to include fresh cilantro and raw jalapeño and serrano peppers. Last week, the Atlanta-based CDC warned those at increased risk of foodborne illness — elderly people, infants and people with compromised immune systems — to avoid eating jalapeños and serranos.

Within the past 48 hours the FDA sent a team to Mexico to investigate a packing house that receives peppers from a number of farms, Acheson said. He said the investigation there is ongoing, but it's not believed that the firm also processes tomatoes.

Infection with salmonella bacteria can cause diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps. Symptoms can last up to a week and most people recover on their own. But severe cases may require hospitalization and infections that spread from the intestines to the bloodstream can be deadly.

Elderly people, infants and people with compromised immune systems are at greatest risk of developing severe illness, according to the CDC.