Tomato Industry Reeling ---

[defendandprotect]

North America tomato industry reeling: growers By Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) - Florida's tomato industry is in "complete collapse" and growers in California and Mexico are having trouble selling their crops as U.S. regulators hunt the source of a salmonella outbreak linked to certain tomato varieties, growers said on Tuesday.

In Florida, the No. 1 U.S. tomato producer, $40 million worth of tomatoes will rot unless the U.S. Food and Drug Administration quickly traces the source of the outbreak and clears the state's produce, an industry official said.

"We've had to stop packing, stop picking," said Reggie Brown, executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange.

"The stuff that should have been harvested over the weekend won't survive more than another day or so. The stuff we have in storage is getting riper every minute and at some point it will have to be disposed of," Brown said.

The FDA warned U.S. consumers on Saturday that the outbreak was linked to eating certain raw red plum, red Roma, and red round tomatoes, and products containing those tomatoes.

Major restaurant and grocery chains stopped selling those varieties, and some stopped selling all raw tomatoes entirely.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080610/us_nm/food_tomatoes_florida_dc

[ananda]

1. Next thing you know..

.. some company will come up with gm
salmonella resistant tomatoes and spinach
and will corner the market on vegetables.

Ouch!

[LSparkle]

2. Relieved I heard today that cherry tomatoes are OK

I still have a bag of those (from Mexico) in my kitchen, so I
guess I can now safely eat them ...

[sammytko]

3. Maybe i should open a tomato stand

I have 26 plants producing beautiful red tomatoes every day.

Nothing better than a home grown tomato!

[uppityperson]

7. You could probably get a good bit for them.

I'm in NW WA and there are no tomatoes except a few on the vine ones in the stores today. Big empty spots, no tomatoes except a few lonely on the vine ones. We've some reddening on a plant that we kept inside last winter. Yum.

[madrchsod]

4. it`s regular tomatoes

none of the other kinds are bad...ya right...! the worse thing is they have no idea where they came from. looks like container tomatoes this year.

[leftchick]

5. wtf? raw tomatoes?

are there any other kind besides canned??

[Dr.Phool]

6. I remember when the food used to be safe to eat.

Back before 2001.

[kestrel91316]

8. The tomato industry will do JUST FINE. Those tomatoes they pulled

off the shelves ain't goin into a dumpster. They are going to processors to make sauce and paste and such. Nobody is gonna go broke over this. They just want us to think so.

"The food safety rules are TOO STRICT, WAAAAAHHHHHHH, and we can't make a profit anymore..........."

[LisaM]

9. The fact that they can't find the source is disturbing

food travels too much anyway. I am going to try hard to start buying local produce. It's not that easy.

At the Mexican place I got lunch today (in Seattle) there were no tomatoes! The pico de gallo looked quite funny; all white and green.

[renate]

10. dumb me

I went ahead and bought greenhouse tomatoes today because--silly me!--I assumed that if the problem hadn't been tracked down, the tomatoes would be pulled from the shelves. There were at least two other people buying some at the same time, too, so either the word about tomatoes hasn't gotten out or I'm not the only one stupid enough to trust in the safety of the food supply.


Edit: FYI: At this link it says that cherry and grape tomatoes and tomatoes sold still on the vine are OK:
http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/tomatoes.html
And of course tomatoes grown at home.

[CanonRay]

11. They're all probably Florida Repug farmers anyway.

[bemildred]

12. You could always cook them enough.

That's what I do. And wash them good. It's not like salmonella is some sort of rare strain of bacteria.

[Nikia]

13. Exactly

We accept that any chicken that we buy might have salmonella. We don't worry too much though because cooking kills it.