Tomato outbreak claims first Fla. victim

By SUSAN SALISBURY

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Thursday, June 12, 2008

An unidentified Southwest Florida man has become the state's first victim of a national salmonella outbreak after he consumed raw tomatoes while on a visit to New York, state and federal officials said Thursday.

The man has recovered, but the outbreak associated with three kinds of raw tomatoes has widened to 228 cases in 23 states, said officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In addition to Florida, states with confirmed cases for the first time are Georgia, Missouri, New York, Tennessee and Vermont.

The cases are listed based on where the victims live, which isn't necessarily the same state where they consumed the tomatoes, said Ian Williams, chief of the CDC's OutbreakNet Team.

"We are aware of at least 25 hospitalizations," Williams said Thursday on a conference call with reporters. "No deaths are officially attributed to the outbreak."

Judi Spann, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Health, said she could not release the name or age of the Florida man who was confirmed to have contracted the Salmonella Saintpaul strain from tomatoes, but she said he lives in Southwest Florida.

The state Health Department has no other cases under investigation, she said.

Williams said the number of people affected has grown by 61 since Monday, when there were 167 illnesses reported in 17 states.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned consumers not to eat raw red plum, red Roma or round red tomatoes - unless those tomatoes originated in places not associated with the outbreak. Other kinds of tomatoes, such as cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, tomatoes sold with the vine still attached and tomatoes grown at home, also are safe to eat, the FDA said.

"I want to emphasize there are many types of tomatoes on the market that are safe," said David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods at the FDA.

The list of tomato-growing sites in production that have been deemed safe includes 19 counties in Florida, plus 27 other states and countries.

Growing areas included on the FDA's "safe list" either were not harvesting when the outbreak began, had distribution that did not match the outbreak's distribution, or were growing types of tomatoes not associated with the outbreak.

Still under suspicion are tomatoes from Mexico and Central Florida that would have been consumed in April and May, Acheson said.

Acheson said the FDA is in talks with Mexico, but its investigators have not traveled there.

"At this stage of the trace-back, it is not clear that it is Mexico at all," Acheson said.