As tomato season nears, growers try to calm fears

PAINTER

Mike Mahovic, a research associate at Virginia Tech's Eastern Shore Agricultural Research and Educational Center in the tiny town off of U.S. 13, is busy now - testing water and patting the nervous hands of tomato producers.

Virginia is fourth in tomato production nationwide. About 90 percent of the state's tomatoes come from 5,000 fertile acres on a peninsula that dips into the Chesapeake Bay. After a salmonella outbreak earlier this year, the producers on the Shore are doing everything they can to make sure their fruit is safe - and that the rest of world knows it.

"We're definitely looking at what's happening," Mahovic said Friday. "Growers are calling me to ask what they can do to make sure their crops are safe."

Among their concerns, said Butch Nottingham, a state Department of Agriculture marketing specialist on the Shore, is "tomato resistance." That is, tomato producers fear that consumers will shy away because of the salmonella outbreak.

Major restaurant chains have quit serving tomatoes since the outbreak started, Mahovic said. Places such as Olive Garden, Chick-fil-A and Hardee's aren't putting tomatoes on their plates and sandwiches.

Tomatoes are grown elsewhere in the state, but not on such a large basis. In Hanover County, near Richmond, local producers are looking for the first of the 2008 crop to come off the vines this weekend, said Elaine Lidholm, spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture.

Virginia tomatoes, so far, are unaffected by the Salmonella Saintpaul food virus.

The food poisoning isn't considered dangerous for otherwise healthy individuals, according to a special Web site set up by the FDA to address the concern, but it could cause diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps, and it could last for four to seven days.

"Everybody's concerned," Nottingham said. "Tomatoes come from so many sources and go through so many sources. They're probably the most common food served in restaurants. A ton of tomatoes at a re-packer can go to 100 different places."

That's why this particular strain of salmonella, considered fairly rare, has been so difficult to track.

The fruit is seldom picked ripe. Green tomatoes typically go to packing houses for a shot of ethylene gas to promote ripening.

Last year, the crop brought about $140 million into the state's economy, according to the Department of Agriculture. Virginia supplied the nation with 183.1 million pounds of tomatoes. The vast majority of them - 80 to 90 percent - came from the Eastern Shore, Lidholm said.

A surge of newly confirmed cases moved Friday's official count to 552 illnesses in 32 states, pushing the outbreak into record territory.

"Virginia tomatoes have never been associated with this outbreak," Todd Haymore, commissioner of the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, said in a statement. "In fact, when it occurred, Virginia tomatoes were still in the field, where 95 percent of them remain today."

Mahovic is busy making sure the Eastern Shore tomatoes stay safe. He's testing water from irrigation wells dug two years ago after a similar scare.

"We're about two weeks to a month to bringing our first tomato out of the field," Mahovic said. "And we have to look at the statistics. In the U.S. alone, we eat about 6 billion tomatoes annually. Individually, we have maybe a 1-in-20 million chance of getting bad fruit. "

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Linda McNatt, (757) 222-5561, linda.mcnatt@pilotonline.com