WASHINGTON - Frustrated tomato growers and sellers have asked the government to lift a five-week-old salmonella warning and want taxpayers to reimburse them for losses that could exceed $100 million, industry officials said yesterday.
Tomato farmers, packers and distributors made the request to the Food and Drug Administration last week, a month after the agency first told consumers to avoid eating certain tomatoes from suspected regions, later identified as parts of Florida and Mexico.
Industry officials say they no longer see a need to keep the warning. Tomatoes haven't been harvested from the suspected areas in weeks, and investigators haven't found any evidence that tomatoes were to blame. Last week, the government said it had expanded the focus of the investigation to include jalapeno peppers and other produce.
"After going through fields and packing houses, testing over 2,000 samples and not finding one positive, we feel the time has come to release tomatoes and make it clear they were not part of this crisis," said Bob Spencer, a part owner of West Coast Tomato, a Florida grower and packer.
Industry officials from California and Florida, two of the country's leading tomato producing states, said they have started talking to members of Congress about getting legislation that would compensate them for losses that could reach $250 million.
"We believe the FDA basically dropped the ball," said J. Luis Rodriguez, an adviser to Florida Farmers Inc., a trade association. "This was a blatant goof-up, and they should pay."
Since the outbreak began in April, the rare strain of salmonella has sickened more than 1,000 people nationwide, including at least 29 in Maryland. It is the largest salmonella outbreak in at least a decade, and the FDA's inability to identify the source has intensified criticism of the government food safety system.
State and federal investigators implicated tomatoes early on, and the FDA issued a nationwide warning June 7 that cautioned consumers against eating raw red plum, red Roma and round red tomatoes. The only exceptions were vine-on tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and grape tomatoes - as well as tomatoes from areas that weren't harvesting the crop at the time the outbreak began.
That list of cleared regions has grown to encompass virtually all sources of tomatoes - 44 states and eight countries.
