ai yi yiiii
Posted on 06/10/2008 2:47:28 PM PDT by kellynla
MIAMI (Reuters) - Florida's tomato industry is in "complete collapse" and growers in California and Mexico are having trouble selling their crops as U.S. regulators hunt the source of a salmonella outbreak linked to certain tomato varieties, growers said on Tuesday.
In Florida, the No. 1 U.S. tomato producer, $40 million worth of tomatoes will rot unless the U.S. Food and Drug Administration quickly traces the source of the outbreak and clears the state's produce, an industry official said.
"We've had to stop packing, stop picking," said Reggie Brown, executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange.
"The stuff that should have been harvested over the weekend won't survive more than another day or so. The stuff we have in storage is getting riper every minute and at some point it will have to be disposed of," Brown said.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Maybe they should can them.
Very surprising.
Had the headline read, America Fishing Industry Reeling: Tuna, it wouldn't have been such a shocker.
With this "fishy" salmonella scare, the greedy capitalists of "BIG TOMATO" are falsely jacking the price up to more than $6/LB.
We need a WINDFALL PROFITS" tax on BIG TOMATO !!!!!
Exactly what I was thinking. Get the tomatoes to the cannery—heat processing kills germs.
What do you want to bet that the bad tomatoes will turn out to be from Mexico?
ai yi yiiii
[Tomatoes here are still in the $0.69-1.98/lb range. They did hit $3+ a couple of years ago for a short period.]
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When the spinach contamination hit, it took several months to get that sorted out.
Ironically, the shelf-life of such products are closer to days, not weeks, and certainly not months. One would think that the problem would cycle out in a couple of weeks. Yet, these contamination events seem to take several months.
Something is rotten, and it isn’t the spinach or the tomatoes.
You say bad tomatoes, I say rotten tomatoes, and believe me we have gotten millions and millions of rotten tomatoes from Mexico before this story ever hit the news.
question:
can the roots of tomato plants take in salmonella and distribute it to the plant making it part of the fruit?
From what I understand, if you get tomatoes with part of the vine on them, you are safe...but don’t hold me to that.
My digestive system is pretty much cast iron...I didn't get married until I was in my mid-30's. During my summers in college, I ate roadkill (my fire station supplemented our food budget by eating plenty of fresh venison). I've had souvlaki, and other native dishes, in Crete and Greece. Also, countless C-rats while in the Army.
My daughter works at a local restaurant (Snuffer's for all you DFW denizens), and she painstakingly tells her customers that their tomatoes are from Florida.
My market had very good tomatoes, the kind with three or four attached by a stem, on sale for 78 cents/pound yesterday. My news shows say tomatoes with stems are OK. I eat a tomato every day and will continue. I use a spray-on veggie cleaner that removes a ton of greenish stuff from the skins, then rinse with warm water, dry and put them in fridge.
All of which our local health department recommends.
That is precisely what I've been thinking. If it were domestic contamination, we would have heard about it. But, if it's from Mexico, it further tarnishes the reputation of imports of Mexican fresh produce, and the globaloniests do not want that.
Which is what will probably happen.
Expect to see some reeeeeeeeeeeeely cheap spaghetti sauce on your grocery shelves.
Yup--I keep thinking heat-process the tomatoes, make juice or ketchup or sauce or paste. Terrible to waste all that good Vitamin C!
I grow my own along with various peppers and turn them into my winter supply of salsa.
Or illegals purposefully contaminating them. When I first read the story, "on purpose" immediately came to mind. I think someone is trying to show "those damn Americans".
LMAO!!!! Were you listening to Rush today???
Did you listen to Rush today? He explained who gets windfall profits. A company who puts money, time, energy, etc; into their product DOES NOT MAKE WINDFALL PROFITS.
Who makes windfall profits off the oil compaines? THE GOVERNMENT.After reading your post again I think maybe you were being sarcastic, right?
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