WASHINGTON Restaurant operators are changing tomato varieties and sources to get the fruit back on their menus in a raw form, even as a salmonella outbreak related to three popular types continues to spread.
Health officials said Wednesday that 228 people in 23 states had been sickened by salmonella Saintpaul, an uncommon form of the bacteria. Twenty-five have been hospitalized, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said.
FDA officials said they’re getting closer to finding the source of the contamination, which has been linked to raw Roma, plum and round red tomatoes. In the meantime, a finding that the implicated tomatoes were harvested in April has prompted the agency to add more growing areas to the list of sources that have been cleared as safe. That roster now includes California, 34 other states and 19 counties of Florida. Yet to be adjudged safe are Mexico, where shipments to the United States have been halted, and some regions of central Florida.
Restaurateurs have been scrambling to secure supplies from the areas that have been deemed safe. Burger King will need weeks to line up enough tomatoes from those areas to supply the whole chain, but some units have already resumed using tomato slices as garnishes.
The Culver’s burgers and frozen custard chain gave its tomato supplier the green light to resume shipments as soon as the source of the item was put on the FDA’s all-clear list.
Brinker International Inc. said it has restored tomatoes in its Chili’s, Romano’s Macaroni Grill and On the Border casual-dining brands.
McDonald’s has indicated that it won’t resume tomato usage until sufficient sources to resupply all its U.S. restaurants can be lined up, the Associated Press reported.
Produce experts say Roma, plum and red round varieties make up about half the tomatoes that are eaten raw in the United States. With supplies still crimped, some operators are switching to grape, cherry or vine-ripened tomatoes, which were not suspected of being involved in the outbreak.
Garden Fresh, parent of the Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes buffet chains, said it had replaced the Roma tomatoes usually featured in its food bars with grape tomatoes. The company also said it has rewritten the recipe for its Pizza Focaccia to eliminate the use of Roma tomatoes.
Cafe Annie, the fine-dining landmark in Houston, is now making its pico de gallo with grape and cherry tomatoes, according to the Houston Chronicle. The paper said the two smaller varieties cost the restaurant $1.90 per pound, compared with the 71 cents per pound they were paying for red rounds.
In Mexico City, observers have said the shutdown of the U.S. market for tomatoes grown in the area have depressed the price of the fruit there to the equivalent of 35 cents per pound.