"What Katrina did for FEMA this salmonella thing is going to do for the FDA," said Spencer, vice president of West Coast Tomato, referring to the problems associated with FEMA's response to Hurricane Katrina. "They are going to have to be much more prudent before ringing the alarm bell."
Though tomatoes have a "strong association" with many of more than 800 salmonella cases across the nation, the FDA has not confirmed that the fruit carries the illness or that tomatoes were the culprit, the agency said late last week. Of more than 1,700 tomato samples collected so far, none has tested positive for the rare Salmonella Saintpaul strain.
That news came as another shock for an industry contending with a bigger hit to its sales than any natural disaster could bring. Ever since early June when the FDA warned consumers to avoid certain varieties of tomatoes from certain locales, sales of Florida tomatoes have plummeted -- dropping 60 percent by some accounts.
The Florida tomato industry has pegged its potential losses from the salmonella issue at $500 million, about the value of a year's crop.
The FDA had previously cleared some of Florida's growing region, including Manatee, Sarasota and Charlotte counties, and most of the Mexican states thought to be possible suspects.
"You would have thought with more than 800 people sick they would have found a single tomato in someone's fridge that was contaminated," Spencer said.