Although federal health officials have not cut tomatoes off
the salmonella outbreak cause list, an eruption that has affected more than
1,270 people nationwide, tomato growers are demanding taxpayers to pay them
compensations them for their losses.
Rep. Tim Mahoney, a Democrat from Florida,
a major tomato producer in the U.S.,
initiated legislation on Wednesday night that would offer the nation’s tomato
growers and shippers $100 million to reimburse for shortfalls they encountered
in the outbreak. The Agriculture Department would settle upon who meets the
criteria, much like the way catastrophe assistance is conducted.
Meanwhile, Congress has programmed at least three hearings
next week in order to discuss the salmonella outbreak and why it took so long
to discover what generated it.
The required amount is founded on an assessment carried out
by Florida
growers and includes crops abandoned in the field, merchandise dumped by
retailers and tomatoes forced to be sold at a very low price, according to
Reggie Brown, executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, a
cooperative of tomato farmers, cited by the Wall Street Journal.
On June 7, the Food and Drug Administration recommended
consumers not to eat certain types of raw tomatoes, believed to carry the
virulent Saintpaul strain of salmonella. Many restaurants got rid of their
supplies of tomatoes, and many consumers avoided them. However, the number of
cases increased and investigations looking for salmonella on tomatoes proved
that the produces had nothing to do with the outbreak.
This week, the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention announced they had discovered that jalapeno peppers coming from a Texas distribution
center had been the source of the Saintpaul strain. Last week, the FDA canceled
its warning on tomatoes, but the CDC stood firm with the possibility that
tomatoes had caused earlier cases.
Nonetheless, it is unclear whether the bill will pass
Congress. Last year, spinach cultivators ineffectively asked for compensations
for their losses after the government’s 2006 recall of fresh spinach after an
outbreak of E. coli.
