Tossing tomatoes: Regulators, sellers wasted no time curbing salmonella outbreak

ATLANTA — Supermarkets and fast-food chains that threw out tomatoes suspected in a salmonella outbreak were acting aggressively to protect their customers' health and avoid a consumer backlash, experts say, possibly because of past experiences over food-safety incidents.

Consumer advocates also say the federal government, accused of being sluggish in the past, is being more responsive.

It's an expensive proposition to toss seemingly edible food, but McDonald's and others had good reason to pull the tomatoes, said Bill Marler, a Seattle attorney who for 15 years has specialized in food-contamination cases.

"The dilemma is if they don't recall the tomatoes and someone gets sick, then they're going to really look foolish," he said.

Growers, however, smell doom, predicting consumers will stay away from one of the joys of summer.

The Food and Drug Administration warned consumers in New Mexico and Texas as early as June 3 about the outbreak. The agency expanded its warning over the weekend and chains began voluntarily removing many red plum, red Roma or round red tomatoes from their shelves in response.

Federal regulators were still trying to pinpoint the source of the dangerous bacteria, while the Food and Drug Administration was pinpointing states and countries that had safe tomatoes. Florida and California were added to the list Tuesday.

"Preliminary information suggests that the tomatoes may have come from Mexico, though the FDA's investigation does not confirm that," said Deborah Busemeyer, a spokeswoman for the New Mexico Department of Health. The state has seen 63 cases of the rare strain salmonella saintpaul.

"We are getting closer to identifying the source or sources," Julie Zawisza, a spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration, said late Tuesday.

There were no confirmed salmonella deaths linked to the outbreak, which was reported in at least 17 states. Fewer than 200 people turned up sick. One case has been reported in Washington state.

Too early — or too late?

Some experts contrasted this scare to earlier ones that produced more tepid reactions.

Health officials say they are aware of 13 tomato-associated outbreaks since 1990. The largest was in 2004, when more than 500 cases occurred in at least five states, linked to a convenience-store chain.

In 2006, the last prominent outbreak of salmonella associated with tomatoes, at least 183 illnesses occurred in 21 states. That outbreak was blamed on tomatoes eaten in restaurants — but restaurants didn't stop serving tomatoes back then.

Experts cited a range of possible explanations for the difference, including the FDA's quick and specific action.

"This outbreak, the FDA is clearly making an effort to do better to inform consumers," said Sarah Klein, attorney in the food-safety program for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group. "They have been fairly slow in the past."

Others saw companies making announcements at a time some might consider either too late or too early: Too late, in that the outbreak appears to be winding down, with no new illnesses occurring in two weeks. And too early, in that health investigators have not yet pinned down a particular food outlet, distributor or grower as a source of the outbreak.

For their part, restaurant chains said they were simply being cautious.

"This action is being taken as a precautionary measure to ensure the safety of our guests," said Burger King spokeswoman Denise Wilson.

McDonald's spokesman Bill Whitman said the restaurant chain made the decision to recall tomatoes with "an abundance of caution." He noted that McDonald's also wasn't implicated in any way in the recall.

Asked if McDonald's has lowered the bar for when it yanks foods or ingredients, Whitman said: "We're always trying to improve on our own standards."

Sensitive issues

Some believe food sellers have become increasingly sensitive to the issue of contaminated produce since 2006, when spinach contaminated with E. coli bacteria killed three people and shook consumer confidence in green leafy vegetables.

"The spinach outbreak was very influential," said Dr. Patricia Griffin, who oversees food-borne-illness investigations at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The FDA has been communicating with food-industry groups about the outbreak. But no one within the agency consulted specifically with McDonald's before the company made its decision to pull tomatoes, FDA spokeswoman Kimberly Rawlings said.

The agency warned consumers over the weekend to avoid certain raw red plum, red Roma and red round tomatoes and products containing them.

Cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes and those sold with the vine still attached are not associated with the outbreak, officials said, nor are tomatoes grown in the following states, territories and countries: Arkansas, California, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Belgium, Canada, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Israel, the Netherlands and Puerto Rico.

Federal investigators know that certain types of tomatoes and certain locales are safe because harvest times and distribution patterns don't match the salmonella outbreak, said Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's assistant commissioner for food protection.

Washington state agriculture officials are talking with the FDA to determine whether the state should be added to the list of tomato-growing regions not affected by the salmonella outbreak. Washington's crop is small compared to major growers like California and Florida, less than 400 acres mainly grown in Yakima County, said state Department of Agriculture spokesman Jason Kelly.

Most of those tomatoes are not harvested until August.

For federal officials, identifying the source of contamination is "not like bags of spinach that have bar codes or packets of cereal," because tomatoes don't have similar markings to trace their origin, Acheson said. "We have not yet definitively figured out where these have come from."

The most likely cause is "a problem at a farm," though the FDA hasn't ruled out the possibility of contamination being introduced somewhere else in the supply chain, Acheson said.

The salmonella causing the outbreak is a very unusual type called salmonella saintpaul.

Associated Press writers Mike Stobbe, Seth Borenstein, Matthew Perrone, Dave Carpenter and Laura Wides-Munoz in Miami contributed to this report. Information from The New York Times, Bloomberg News and Los Angeles Times is included in this report, which also contains information from Seattle Times staff reporter Karen Gaudette and

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