Tomato Growers Seek Payback on Salmonella Scare: Cindy Skrzycki

By Cindy Skrzycki

Aug. 5 (Bloomberg) -- While throwing a few rotten tomatoes at U.S. regulators might help ease their economic pain, growers involved in the latest salmonella food epidemic would prefer cash for their trouble.

After weeks of implicating domestic tomatoes in an outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul, federal food-safety sleuths have shifted the spotlight to jalapeño and then Serrano peppers grown in Mexico. They were found to be related to more than 1,300 infections in at least 43 states, the District of Columbia and Canada.

This left tomato growers, particularly those in Florida, holding the shopping bag, since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced on June 7 that certain types of tomatoes shouldn't be eaten nationwide.

The advisory was lifted July 17, but growers say they already lost $100 million in sales during the investigation, which they charge was conducted poorly and without enough consultation with them.

The growers knew the agency hadn't gotten to the source of the problem when the FDA told people to stop eating tomatoes and the illnesses still increased, said Robert Guenther, senior vice president for public policy for United Fresh Produce Association, an industry group in Washington.

Things got even more problematic for investigators when batteries of tests didn't turn up a single domestic tomato with the bacteria.

The late reprieve for the industry shows the difficulty of conducting international investigations of food-borne illnesses with limited resources and imperfect ways to ``trace back'' the product to its source.

Pay for Mistakes

At the same time, pressure has intensified to solve cases quickly and to pay for ``mistakes'' made.

Holding a tomato in one hand and a jalapeno in the other, Representative Bart Stupak, a Democrat from Michigan and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce oversight and investigations subcommittee, pressed the FDA on whether the tomato was still a ``vegetable of interest'' or has been cleared.

David W.K. Acheson, the FDA's associate commissioner for food, responded at a July 31 hearing that no mistakes had been made and that tomatoes on the market now were safe to eat.

The FDA said it followed the leads provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It found in early interviews with sick people that, overwhelmingly, they had eaten raw tomatoes in salsa or Mexican-style restaurant food.

Critical Growers

The Salmonella Saintpaul case began in May when federal and state investigators identified cases of the infection, which can cause serious illness and death, in New Mexico and Texas.

As the weeks passed, tomato growers became increasingly critical of the conduct of the investigation. Florida growers supply about half the nation's fresh tomatoes annually.

Though it's not feasible for growers to legally challenge the U.S. government for their losses -- and the investigation isn't yet over -- they hope Congress will help.

Representative Tim Mahoney, a Democrat from Florida, is sympathetic to the $1.3 billion tomato industry, as are other members of the state's delegation. He introduced a bill on July 24 that would compensate growers and packers for losses up to $100 million.

``There should be some compensation,'' said Mahoney. ``They have done nothing. They shouldn't be held accountable. You have indicted an entire industry and left doubt that it's OK to eat tomatoes.''

Heads on Platter

Bill Marler, a food-safety plaintiff attorney with Marler Clark LLP in Seattle, said the push to exonerate tomatoes may be premature.

``Everyone empathizes,'' Marler said of the industry's losses. He cautioned that imperfect information may have implicated tomatoes, but ``we would ask for their heads on a platter if it was tomatoes.''

There are other policy questions about penalizing agencies for their conclusions in the course of an investigation.

``You can't have public health people fearing liability,'' said Michael Taylor, a research professor in the George Washington University School of Public Health.

Taylor, who was a top food-safety official in the Clinton administration, suggested preventative measures and more efficiently run investigations.

``The government should mandate a set time period to provide answers to questions of where the produce came from,'' he said.

No Aid Programs

Tomato growers think they have a case since they don't qualify for other aid programs.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture runs crop-insurance programs that cover disasters from floods and hurricanes, not crops ensnared in recalls.

Some companies have recall insurance, but they're not likely to collect unless there is a recall -- not a warning or an advisory.

This isn't the first time produce growers looked to Congress for help with a food-safety issue.

Even though the 2006 bagged spinach recall involving Dole Food Co. and Natural Selection Foods LLC was more contained, growers took a $100 million hit on their crop, according to the United Fresh Produce Association.

Friday the 13th

Spinach growers got a financial-aid provision part way through Congress but didn't succeed.

In March 1989, the U.S. banned the entry of seedless grapes from Chile after two grapes were found to have been contaminated with cyanide, leaving Chilean growers, exporters and importers with millions of dollars in losses. The industry tried to recover some $210 million only to get word four years later that a federal judge ruled the FDA wasn't responsible because it was doing its job.

``We got no compensation,'' said Richard Eastes, a California fruit and vegetable consultant who worked for a company affected by the ban. ``It was just a bad dream.''

(Cindy Skrzycki is a regulatory columnist for Bloomberg News. She can be reached at cskrzycki@bloomberg.net .)

To contact the writer of this column: Cindy Skrzycki at cskrzycki@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 5, 2008 00:01 EDT

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