This Is Going To Hurt
As if the state didn’t have enough problems, CNN reports that Suspect tomatoes traced to Florida or Mexico
(CNN) — Investigators looking for the source of a salmonella outbreak linked to tomatoes will focus on farms in Mexico and Florida, federal health authorities said Friday.
Since April, more than 500 people have contracted the same strain of salmonella, linked to raw tomatoes.
The tracebacks “have taken us from point of consumption all the way back to certain farms in Mexico and Florida,” said Dr. David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods at the Food and Drug Administration.
The agency will send teams of investigators to farms in both locations this weekend as well as to the pathways from those farms in an attempt to determine where the contamination occurred, he said.
The tomatoes may not have been contaminated on a farm, he stressed; the contamination could have occurred in a packing shed, warehouse, supplier chain or distribution center.
This should pretty much wipe out the market for Florida vegetables.
4 comments
Ouch. I don’t think CAs still gotten over the bad spinach episode. Unfortunately, people enjoy tomatoes much more than spinach.
Even local people are turning down fresh tomatoes on anything. It is going to be bad for the workers as most of the tomatoes for the fast food places come from Florida, and they have been trying for a pay increase.
I hear Burger King had just agreed to pay $.01 more to the tomato pickers.
And now nothing will get picked.
Either someone just filled the display before I got there, or no one is buying them, because the tomatoes at my local supermarket didn’t look like they had been touched this afternoon.