By David Mitchell

Web Editor's note: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration continues to update the number of reported illnesses from Salmonella Saintpaul, the states in which the illnesses were reported, and a variety of other applicable information.

(June 10, UPDATED 3:55 p.m.) Finally, there is some good news for Florida tomato grower-shippers. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services announced June 10 that the state had been added to the Food and Drug Administration’s list of approved sourcing areas for roma, red plum and round red tomatoes. An FDA consumer advisory had brought the state’s industry to a halt after fresh tomatoes were linked to an outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul that has sickened 167 people in 17 states. “I was confident Florida was not the problem and was not the source of the salmonella outbreak impacting other states,” Florida agriculture commissioner Charles Bronson said in a news release. “Florida tomato growers have one of the most stringent tomato production programs in the nation.” Though Florida had not been pinpointed as the source of the outbreak, the state has been suffering the consequences of an FDA consumer advisory that warned consumers not to eat roma, red plum or red round tomatoes unless the products are sourced from areas that it has approved. The agency initially released a list including eight states, six foreign countries and Puerto Rico that have been cleared in its traceback investigation. Noticeably absent from the original list were Florida and Mexico. Mexico appears to be the last large production area that has not been cleared. Before the FDA cleared Florida, Reggie Brown, manager of the Florida Tomato Committee and executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange Inc., told Reuters new service that the state has $40 million worth of product it couldn’t sell. Brown could not be reached for comment June 10, but he told Reuters that growers-shippers had stopped harvesting and packing in that state before the FDA decision was announced. “It fundamentally shut down the industry,” he said. “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.” Many Florida growers already had wrapped up their seasons when the FDA broadened its consumer advisory from two states to all states on June 7, but Jay Martini, salesman for Skokie, Ill.-based Art Kramer’s Produce Buying Service Inc. said growers in Quincy, Palmetto and Ruskin still had product to harvest and sell. Martini said June 10 that a $16 f.o.b. market for 25-pound boxes of mature-green and packinghouse pink tomatoes from Florida had evaporated in the past week. Martini said that wholesalers on the Chicago International Produce Market were selling Florida tomatoes to the area’s ethnic markets and restaurants as recently as June 9. However, he said one of his customers, a Chicago wholesaler, sold 400 cartons of Florida tomatoes June 9 but had 450 cartons returned from customers June 10. “Once it hit the news that McDonald’s and Subway had pulled tomatoes, everyone followed suit,” he said. Burger King, Chipotle, Taco Bell, Panera Bread were among the numerous restaurant chains that have pulled the implicated tomato varieties. Some retailers also have pulled products. Ron McCormick, Wal-Mart’s vice president and divisional merchandise manager for produce and floral, said the nation’s biggest retailer pulled only implicated varieties from growing areas that haven’t been cleared. “We did not pull the products that were not implicated, such as tomatoes on the vine, and we are furiously shipping product from cleared states,” he said. “We are hoping to hear good news from the FDA so that we can support all of our suppliers ... especially those that may be suffering for others' miss-steps.” McDonald’s spokeswoman Danya Proud said the chain has pulled sliced tomatoes from its sandwiches but continues to offer grape tomatoes, which have not been implicated in the outbreak, in salads. Proud said it was unclear when sliced tomatoes would return to McDonald’s menu. According to The San Diego Tribune, Jack In the Box is in the process of restocking its locations with fresh tomatoes from California after dropping tomatoes during the weekend. Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, La Grange, said he hoped other retailers and restaurant operators also will restock with product from cleared states, including Georgia. “I’m hoping they’re just clearing out their pipelines,” he said. “They might not have a clear understanding of where their tomatoes came from, and they’ll stock back up with tomatoes from safe states.” Hall said sales have been extremely slow for his members, and there are concerns that growers in FDA-approved states will suffer from the media’s widespread coverage of the outbreak. “The damage has been done from a consumer standpoint,” Hall said June 10. “We might have the same backlash with tomatoes that we saw with spinach.” An outbreak of E. coli linked to fresh spinach sickened more than 200 people and killed three in 2006. Spinach and bagged salad sales plummeted in the aftermath. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that at least 23 people have been hospitalized during the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak, but no deaths have been reported. However, The Houston Chronicle reported June 10 that Salmonella Saintpaul was a contributing factor in the death of 67-year-old cancer patient in Texas. E-mail David Mitchell