RICHMOND, Va. — The 6,000 acres of tomatoes grown on Virginia’s sea-swept Eastern Shore were never implicated in the national salmonella outbreak — they were still on the vine weeks after people starting getting sick.
That hasn’t made much difference to tomato broker Batista Madonia III, who has seen sales and prices plummet in the wake of a salmonella outbreak that sickened people in 42 states and left the nation’s tomato industry feeling woozy as well.
Since the government announced it was investigating whether tomatoes caused the outbreak that began in April, the nation’s tomato industry estimates it has lost more than $100 million.
Health investigators have not been able to find tomatoes that contained the salmonella strain that sickened 1,220 people, and the government on Thursday lifted its salmonella warning involving tomatoes.
The move hasn’t brightened the outlook of the $1.3 billion industry, and the stigma and uncertainty of the salmonella’s origin are likely to add to its losses.
“The damage has been done. I don’t think we’ll ever get over it,” said Madonia, sales manager for East Coast Brokers & Packers, which grows 4,000 acres on the Eastern Shore.
At the height of summer, when tomatoes are a staple of the picnic season, growers have seen their plump red produce pulled from fast-food menus and passed over by shoppers.
“Summer is our biggest window of opportunity. If we miss this season, we can’t get it back,” said Tom Deardorff, a farmer in California, which grows the most tomatoes in the U.S. “It’s hard to force people to eat tomatoes at Christmastime.”
Deardorff, a Ventura County farmer who grows 600 acres of beefsteak and Roma tomatoes, worries it could take a year or more for consumers to regain their appetite for tomatoes.
