The Tomato Recall, Revisited

The FDA still hasn't identified the precise origin of the tomatoes responsible for the recent 277 reported cases of salmonella saintpaul. But at this point it is looking likely that the contamination is occurring during the growing phase, rather than the processing phase, which would explain why it's been affecting tomatoes over a period of nearly 2 months.

I was struck by the FDA's advised precautions.

"Consumers should not attempt to cook the tomatoes involved in this outbreak in an effort to kill Salmonella. Handling tomatoes contaminated with Salmonella can spread the bacterium to anything the handler touches, including hands, kitchen utensils, cutting boards, sinks, and other foods. Cooking tomatoes in the home will not ensure that Salmonella is eliminated."

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, 35% of the supermarket chickens tested in a recent study contained salmonella. You could substitute "chicken" for "tomatoes" in the sentence beginning with "Handling tomatoes," and everything would hold true. And yet we've grown accustomed to taking all kinds of precautions when handling raw chicken, especially chicken raised on factory farms. In fact, store bought chickens come with safe handling instructions on their labels.

So why is the FDA telling us it's unsafe to cook tomatoes? Is it because we're used to eating them raw, so handling them the way we handle chicken would take some kind of cognitive shift? Or is it because the chicken lobby is more powerful than the tomato lobby? We've actually grown accustomed to salmonella in chicken. We practically assume it's there. In fact, according to Marion Nestle, author of Safe Food and Food Politics, the poultry industry has managed to shift the burden of responsibility to consumers, educating them about how to handle and properly cook chicken containing salmonella, rather than taking steps themselves to ensure that their chicken is free from the bug.

Speaking of double standards, the FDA warning also reminds consumers that fresh tomatoes are often used in other foods, like fresh salsa and guacamole. At this point even Marion Nestle's reputable blog says that the contaminated tomatoes were probably grown in Mexico. But Mediterranean foods are as likely as Mexican dishes to use fresh tomatoes, and an Italian restaurant in the US is just as likely as an American Mexican restaurant to use tomatoes grown in Mexico. So why does the warning mention only Mexican foods?

And I haven't even touched on the issue of globalized food systems vs. localized production.