Can’t imagine your summer burger without a fresh, juicy tomato?
Then buy local.
Susie Quick, owner of Honest Farm Market in Midway, is selling tomatoes that were started in hoop houses in early spring by a group of Amish farmers. Most backyard gardeners and local farmers will have fresh tomatoes by July 4.
Bill Best of Berea said he would take his first tomatoes of the season to the Lexington Farmers’ Market on Saturday. “Because of a cold and wet May which gave the tomato plants in our high tunnels more disease and insects than usual, our early production will be down from last year. Our field tomatoes are doing well and we hope to have plenty of them by the middle of July. I suspect that most peoples’ tomatoes will be late this summer because of the cold and wet weather in May. I know that several growers were late getting their plants in the ground,” he said.
This week consumers were urged to avoid red plum, red Roma or round red tomatoes due to possible contamination with salmonella. Tomato products such as sauces, soups, paste, ketchup and juice remain a safe choice.
Agriculture commissioners meeting in Lexington speak out
This information comes from the Kentucky Department of Agriculture:
On Tuesday, agriculture commissioners from the southeastern United States, meeting in Lexington, expressed their frustration with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over its handling of the outbreak of salmonella in certain tomatoes and urged the agency to reform its procedures.
The FDA has tied raw red plum, raw red Roma and raw round red tomatoes to 167 cases of salmonellosis reported since mid-April. The agency has advised the public to consume tomatoes only from 23 states, part of Florida, Puerto Rico and six foreign countries or tomato varieties that its data suggest are not linked to the outbreak.
“We understand that the FDA has a big responsibility, but it is necessary for them to open the lines of communication with the public as well as the states,” said Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer, president of the Southern Association of State Departments of Agriculture (SASDA), during SASDA’s annual conference. “The FDA needs to work with the states to pinpoint the source of the outbreak and eradicate it without unnecessarily harming producers whose products are not affected by the outbreak.”
During a SASDA business meeting, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson said the FDA’s statements on the salmonella outbreak “have basically shut down the southern tomato growers.” He said growers in the northern part of his state only now are beginning to harvest their 2008 tomato crop. “They couldn’t have been part of this [outbreak],” Commissioner Bronson said. Later on Tuesday Commissioner Bronson announced that FDA has deemed tomatoes currently being harvested in Florida as safe to eat.
Commissioner Bronson said no FDA official has been to Florida or asked his state’s government to help trace the outbreak.
Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks pointed out that his state, which borders Florida, is on the FDA’s list of unaffected states. “It doesn’t make good sense,” he said.
Tennessee Agriculture Commissioner Ken Givens said the decision of some national restaurant chains to take tomatoes off their products comes at a time when U.S. hamburger consumption is at an all-time high. “This couldn’t come at a worse time,” he said.
West Virginia Agriculture Commissioner Gus Douglass said the FDA’s statements on the outbreak are affecting sales of hydroponically grown tomatoes from states farther north that are not on the FDA’s list of unaffected states.
