Another reason to buy local by Ari LeVaux Rarely does a week
pass these days without another food scare or outbreak of
contamination in our modern industrialized food system. This
year alone we’ve had a beef recall (thanks to the documented
slaughter of cattle too sick or weak to walk), E. coli
contamination of lettuce, and salmonella outbreaks linked to
melons and dry cereal. Most recently, tomatoes contaminated with
a rare strain of salmonella (Salmonella saintpaul) have turned
up in 17 states. While the first case was detected in April, the
outbreak is only now making headlines, and many stores and
restaurants are pulling raw tomatoes from their shelves and
menus. Until the salmonella tomato outbreak is contained, the
United States Food and Drug Administration recommends that
consumers avoid raw plum, Roma and red round slicing tomatoes,
and limit their tomato consumption to cherry tomatoes, grape
tomatoes, tomatoes grown at home, and any tomato sold with the
vine still attached – a curious criteria I’ll i