Published: July 17, 2008 08:28 pm      

Agriculture officials: W.Va. tomatoes OK from get-go

Slice the tomatoes again for those backyard cookouts.

Wary federal eyes look-ed upon the popular tomato across America with suspicion the past few weeks, worried that it might be a conduit to salmonella, but the feds flashed the green light Thursday.

In West Virginia, however, there was never any real reason to lose sleep.

Just as the Food and Drug Administration calmed the nation’s fears over its weeks-long salmonella warning, officials in the West Virginia Department of Agriculture view-ed the update with a ho-hum response.

“That’s all right,” communications director Buddy Davidson said. “We’ve been eating West Virginia tomatoes all along.”

While the threat hasn’t completely subsided, the FDA advised Americans to start cutting up tomatoes to complement hamburgers and full meals once more, saying the risk of salmonella is slowing down.

Just to be on the safe side at the outset, the state Department of Agriculture conducted random tests across West Virginia, but never found anything amiss.

“We went out and pul-led some samples and submitted our negative results to the FDA,” Davidson said.

“We were quickly put on the list of places not associated with the outbreak. We tested them at our regulatory environmental affairs division. We’re very big on analytical capability.”

At the same time, the FDA planned to send inspectors to Mexico to look into a packing house that receives peppers, a vegetable that remains on the watch list.

Home-grown tomatoes in West Virginia are fine, and any other edible plants for that matter, provided they haven’t been in any flood water, Davidson said.

“We recommend that if your garden has been under a flood, dispose of it,” Davidson said.

“You just don’t know what’s coming up in that flood water.”

Except for the occasional high water that might have contaminated some plants, Davidson said West Virginia produce has been “fine all summer long.”

“We’re encouraging people to go out and hit the farmers markets,” he said.

“We’ve got 55 farmers markets open this summer and 59 farm stands. That number has tripled since 1994. The senior farmers market and nutrition program has been a good boost for that farm economy here. That has been about a half a million dollars for the last few years.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com