Ask Karen “Tomato Talk”

By Karen McNew
WSLS10 Anchor
Published: June 17, 2008

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Q:  I have a question about the tomatoes with Salmonella.  Does this also affect things like Salsa, pasta sauce, pizza sauce and/or any thing that has tomatoes cooked or not cooked in it?
Thanks,
Wendy Harper

A:  When we first heard about the salmonella outbreak in tomatoes last week we heard a lot of questions and concerns about our local produce and precautions that we should all take to try to keep from getting sick.  We found there is no concern over the jarred or canned products you mention above.  We’ve found the manufacturing process for those products would have eliminated any risk.  However, as the Food and Drug Administration continues to investigate the issue and the number of people getting sick from the affected tomatoes has gone up.

We are all being advised to avoid raw red plum, raw red Roma, and raw red round tomatoes unless they are from areas that have been deemed safe.  There is a very long list of those areas on the F.D.A.’s website.

There are four tomato types the F.D.A. says are definitely safe.  Grape tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, tomatoes on the vine and your home grown tomatoes are all okay to eat.  The F.D.A began focusing in on the problem by a process of elimination and was able to rule out certain regions and states as being possible sources for the tomatoes with salmonella.  The FDA says illness reports started in April.

For some additional perspective we checked about other tomato outbreaks mainly related to Salmonella and found that according to the FDA, “Since 1990, at least 12 large, multi-state food borne outbreaks and some small local outbreaks have been associated with different varieties of tomatoes. From 1998 to 2006, outbreaks reported to FDA associated with tomatoes made up 17 percent of produce-related outbreaks.”

Link to the latest information regarding the most recent outbreak.