Killer tomatoes on the loose!

From USA Today:

The Food and Drug Administration said Sunday that 145 to 150 people in 16 states have been sickened by salmonellosis, which has been linked to the consumption of raw red tomatoes.

States reporting illnesses linked to the outbreak include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Grocery stores, restaurants and fast food joints are pulling tomatoes from their shelves and menus.

All of this leads to multi-million dollar losses on FL farms, with farms placing distribution at a halt until they are sure the crops are uncontaminated:

“We’re losing tomatoes right now and if they don’t act quickly, we’re going to lose them all,” said Edward Angrisani, a partner at Palmetto’s Taylor & Fulton.

The 35 truckloads of the fruit shipped from the company’s packing house every day were brought to a halt. About 190,000 boxes of tomatoes are stacked and ready to be shipped, and an additional 300,000 boxes are in the fields unpicked, said Angrisani, who estimated the loss at $6 million.

Florida is waiting on clearance from the agency to deem its tomatoes safe.

With outbreaks like this happening more and more, isn’t it time we started thinking differently about food distribution? Now we’ve got millions of pounds of food being tossed, thousands of farmhands out of work, and a state’s economy in shambles.

Plus lots of people getting sick from coast to coast, with no clue about where or when the contamination happened.

It’s like creepy sci-fi. Is this the beginning of the end?

(Lucky for you, Rhode Islanders, your trusted farmers thought way ahead. Some very early season, hoop house Rhode Island-grown tomatoes will be available at your local farmers’ markets later this week.)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Daily Dose, Environment, Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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