There's a new food safety scare sweeping the nation. Tomatoes are the culprit this time, especially Romas, and "round red tomatoes." The FDA has been able to rule out small grape tomatoes, tomatoes on the vine, and tomatoes grown at home, and they're telling consumers that it's safe to eat these varieties.
This is a significant improvement over the warnings that were coming out during the e coli outbreak traced to spinach nearly two years ago, some of which recommended that folks avoid all spinach. But it would have been nice to also see the FDA include farmers' market tomatoes, which obviously haven't been distributed widely enough to sicken people in 17 states.
During the spinach incident, a woman coming into my shop ordered a salad, and after I'd assembled it she asked if it contained spinach. I said it did, but I'd bought the greens directly from a local farm. She refused to eat it, and I didn't offer to refund her money. I felt that if she was so concerned, she should have asked the question before she ordered the food. Besides, there was nothing wrong with the salad I served her. Customer service is a two-way street.
I'm left with a burning question about the tomato outbreak: Why have people been getting sick over a period of nearly two months from a bug that takes 72 hours to affect you and was probably present in a single batch of tomatoes processed in a single place? Tomatoes don't last that long, at least they shouldn't, under any kind of natural conditions. The fact that some company is selling tomatoes that are at least two months old is at least as disturbing to me as the salmonella.
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