As the Food and Drug Administration scrambles to find the source of a 16-state outbreak of salmonellosis linked to raw tomatoes, stores and restaurants are pulling implicated varieties from shelves and menus.
Sliced tomatoes disappeared from McDonald's sandwiches, and fresh tomato salsa from Taco Bell. Produce distributors scrambled to source tomatoes from the list of states and countries declared safe, but most stores simply removed the three implicated varieties -- Roma, plum and red round.
The outbreak of the obscure salmonella saintpaul subtype first appeared in New Mexico and Texas on April 23. By this weekend, it had spread to 16 states, with at least 150 reported illnesses and 23 hospitalizations. The FDA is advising consumers not to eat any raw tomatoes except cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, tomatoes sold with the vine still attached and home-grown tomatoes.
That, in turn, led restaurants, food-service distributors and supermarkets to pull tomatoes off their shelves, beginning Saturday, with the list growing longer by the hour Sunday and Monday.
"Tomatoes are just piling up in the storage rooms, they aren't shipping, people aren't selling them," says Amy Philpott of the United Fresh Produce Association in Washington, D.C. The unsold fruit will likely be sent to landfills, "especially the volumes that we could be looking at in this case."
Supermarkets that have pulled the three tomato types include Albertsons, Ralphs, Safeway, Wal-Mart, Vons, Winn-Dixie and Whole Foods.
Sysco of Houston, the largest food-service distributor in North America, pulled the three implicated tomato types from its distribution chain on Saturday, spokesman Mark Palmer says.
The tomato crisis already may be hurting sales at many of the nation's 945,000 restaurants.
"Tomatoes are one of the top 20 produce items selected by consumers," says Donna Garren, vice president of the National Restaurant Association.
McDonald's pulled tomatoes from all of its North American restaurants on Friday. Burger King and Wendy's pulled tomatoes on Sunday following the FDA advisory. None of the chains has reported any tomato-caused illnesses.
Should the tomato issues drag on, Wendy's expects new tomatoes will be available from Southern states within a few weeks, spokesman Denny Lynch says.
Burger King, which places two tomato slices on every Whopper, has not yet seen a decline in Whopper sales, spokeswoman Denise Wilson says. Instead of tomatoes, she says, some patrons ask for more pickles.
Because Applebee's has a larger number of menu items that contain tomatoes, the casual-dining chain's kitchen is working on alternative recipes for those menu items, says Patrick Lenow, spokesman for parent company IHOP. When the outbreak began on April 23, almost all fresh tomatoes available in the USA would have come from Florida and Mexico, Philpott says. The Florida tomato industry estimates a conservative loss of $40 million from June1 to June7. Numbers for Mexico were not immediately available.
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