Denise Goodman is one of Long Island’s top experts on the travels of tomatoes: their sometimes long and very often circuitous trek from farm to plate.
The Manhasset resident is the proprietor of M&R Tomatoes in the New York City Terminal Market — the bustling Hunts Point cooperative in the Bronx — the largest food distribution center in the world.
It is in large part the lengthy route taken to the table — sometimes from the U.S. to Mexico and back — combined with what the government claims is insufficient record keeping in the produce industry, that has made it difficult to trace the source of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened nearly 1,000 people.
Federal health officials have pointed to tomatoes, but in recent days also expanded their focus to other salad bowl constituents — cilantro, jalapeno peppers, serrano peppers, scallions and bulb onions.
No tainted tomatoes found
Goodman disagrees that tomatoes ever were involved in the outbreak, based on growers’ assurances and the government’s inability to find a single tainted tomato. “I know it’s not tomatoes because the evidence just isn’t there,” said Goodman, who supplies tomatoes and other fresh produce to small supermarkets, diners and vegetable vendors on Long Island and elsewhere in the tri-state.
But it is the vastness of the system in which fresh produce is grown, harvested, processed and distributed that impedes government inspectors attempting to trace a specific bacterial strain when it invades the food supply, experts say.
Decades ago, food production was a local enterprise — from nearby farms to small mom-and-pop stores. Now, when food arrives in supermarkets, it’s not unusual for it to have traveled across numerous state lines, and increasingly, across several international borders.
Politicians, watchdog groups and food policy experts point to a regulatory system that has not kept pace with the complexity of modern food distribution. Inspectors are repeatedly stumped when attempting to pinpoint where contamination occurs.
The movement of produce in the United States is extraordinarily complex and much of it driven by consumer demand for nutritional products year round, said Robert Gravani, professor of food science at Cornell University in Ithaca.
“There’s no seasonality to produce any more,” Gravani said. “If you’re willing to pay for it, you can have it, regardless of the season. And that’s a good thing in terms of nutritional value. But we don’t want people getting sick.”
Consumer confidence falling
Goodman is able to maintain a bounty of fresh tomatoes for her customers by following growing seasons in a variety of U.S. regions and Mexico. But she said one bacterial scare after another is destroying consumer confidence and harming business. Still, she is quick to defend American fresh produce.
“It is one of the safest food supplies in the world. And not to minimize the problem with all of the cases,” she said of people sickened by salmonella, “the number is small compared to the amount of fresh produce that’s eaten. We’re doing a pretty good job.”
Top federal scientists and seasoned food safety inspectors have mounted an exhaustive search for the source of Salmonella saintpaul, a strain so rare it infected only three people nationwide last year. As of yesterday, more than 990 cases had been identified in a stepped-up probe involving the Food Emergency Response Network, a consortium of 100 state laboratories working with federal inspectors. The cases have all been linked to a single genetic fingerprint.
In Nassau, three illnesses have been confirmed, with another two in Suffolk where two more are pending. All told, 28 people have been sickened in New York since April, yet authorities concede far more people are likely to have been sickened than are officially reported.
Dr. David Acheson of the Food and Drug Administration acknowledged last week that even though tomatoes were under a spotlight, other produce items are also suspect. Because so many cases in the Southeast involved Mexican restaurants, inspectors are examining fresh guacamole, salsa and the condiment pico de gallo. But Acheson emphasized, “We are still hot on the trail of tomatoes.”
Have tomato will travel
In a recent briefing, he said the FDA during the course of this investigation was surprised to learn about extensive repackaging of U.S.-produced tomatoes for retail distribution. Investigators found some American tomatoes are picked, boxed and sent to Mexico for sorting and repackaging. The products bear stickers stating they were grown in the United States.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has authored federal legislation that would house food safety and inspection in a single agency. The duties currently are spread throughout a variety of government entities, with most handled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which inspects meat and poultry, and the FDA, which oversees produce.
Many multi-ingredient foods that cross jurisdictions are not inspected. An estimated 13 percent of the food supply is imported from abroad but 98.7 percent of those items are never inspected, a study earlier this year found.
Regulation not tough enough
“We have 12 agencies that regulate food safety,” Schumer told Newsday. “But the system is not tough enough,” he said, explaining that many inspections are pre-announced.
“With meats they’ll announce. They don’t do surprise inspections and none of them have a system for tracing when there’s an outbreak. So when you have one of these crises … you can’t trace it and millions of dollars wind up being lost.”
Schumer describes U.S. food inspection as “still back in the days of Upton Sinclair,” referring to the author of the 1906 blockbuster “The Jungle,” a book that revealed shocking practices in the meatpacking industry and led to the creation of federal food inspections.
Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, has urged the FDA to institute emergency regulations requiring that all U.S. produce be traceable.
Even when tomatoes are used in factory-canned tomato sauce, DeWaal said, the government should be able to trace each piece of fruit back to its farm of origin. The center has tracked more than 700 outbreaks of food-borne illnesses linked to fresh produce since 1990.
Yet Suffolk County Health Commissioner Dr. David Graham worried that fear of salmonella could adversely affect produce suppliers and processors, vital to maintaining a choice of healthy fruits and vegetables.
“We want to inform the public of a risk that may be real, but it has to be done with all the best scientific evidence. That’s always a challenge in an outbreak situation. You don’t want to damage someone’s livelihood or put out preliminary information that is not accurate, ” Graham said.
Losses in the tomato industry have been considerable. Goodman has not yet estimated her own. Some industry assessments have been as high as $250 million. Goodman said tons of unaffected tomatoes were trashed as people panicked. In June, she donated tomatoes to charities. “We gave some of them to the homeless.”
States affected
Since April, 991 people in 41 states, the District of Columbia and Canada have been affected with the Salmonella saintpaul strain as of 9 p.m. Monday.
State People affected
Alabama 2
Arkansas 13
Arizona 47
California 8
Colorado 13
Connecticut 4
Florida 2
Georgia 24
Idaho 4
Illinois 95
Indiana 14
Iowa 2
Kansas 17
Kentucky 1
Louisiana 1
Maine 1
Maryland 29
Massachusetts 24
Michigan 7
Minnesota 10
Missouri 12
New Hampshire 4
Nevada 11
New Jersey 9
New Mexico 98
New York 28
North Carolina 10
Ohio 8
Oklahoma 24
Oregon 10
Pennsylvania 11
Rhode Island 3
South Carolina 1
Tennessee 8
Texas 382
Utah 2
Virginia 29
Vermont 2
Washington 4
West Virginia 1
Wisconsin 11
District of Columbia 1
Canada 4
SOURCE: Centers for Disease Control
The hunt for red tomato
One possible scenario FDA officials are investigating as part of the Salmonella saintpaul outbreak:
1. Tomatoes grown in Florida are shipped to Mexico.
2. The tomatoes are washed, sorted and packed.
3. Tomatoes are shipped back to Florida for national distribution.
THE LATEST
WHAT THEY KNOW
The outbreak, traced to early April, is not over, and continues to expand, with more than 990 confirmed sickened.
People are still getting sick despite mass avoidance of Mexican, Central and South Florida tomatoes, whose season has already passed. Fresh tomatoes were the first to be suspected though, throughout the outbreak, the FDA has given the all-clear to grape, cherry, on-the-vine and homegrown tomatoes.
FDA recommends consuming red round, roma and plum tomatoes only if they come from particular U.S. states, certain Florida counties and states of Mexico, or other foreign countries that it lists at www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/tomatoes.html
Other vegetables are suspects, especially those used in fresh salsa, guacamole and pico de gallo. Salsas in jars, cans or plastic containers and sold in supermarkets are not under investigation. There are clusters of cases in the Southwest among people who dined at restaurants that serve Mexican-style foods.
Some food producers have maintained insufficient records, which make tracing produce difficult. U.S. regulators want more producers to move into “the digital age.”
Of the 2,500 known strains of salmonella, the one involved in the outbreak — Salmonella saintpaul — is extremely rare. Fecal matter is often the source of the bacteria.
WHAT THEY DON’T
Federal inspectors are still trying to establish the exact source and learn how, where the bacteria got into the food supply.
Possible vectors include irrigation on a farm, birds or other animals passing through planted fields, workers in a processing plant, tainted equipment or water used to wash produce.
How long the outbreak will continue.
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