Did food sellers overreact to tomato scare?

McDonald’s spokesman Bill Whitman said the restaurant chain made the decision to recall tomatoes with “an abundance of caution.” He noted that McDonald’s also wasn’t implicated in any way in the recall or asked to stop selling tomatoes.

Asked if McDonald’s has lowered the bar for when it yanks foods or ingredients, Whitman said: “We’re always trying to improve on our own standards.”

Meat has been a sensitive topic for restaurant chains after a 1993 outbreak in which four children died and hundreds of people became ill after eating undercooked hamburgers from Jack in the Box restaurants.

But some believe food sellers have become increasingly sensitive to the issue of contaminated produce since 2006, when spinach contaminated with E. coli bacteria killed three people and shook consumer confidence in green leafy vegetables.

“The spinach outbreak was very influential,” said Dr. Patricia Griffin, who oversees foodborne illness investigations at the Centers for Disease control and Prevention.

The FDA has been communicating with food industry groups about the outbreak. But no one within the agency consulted specifically with McDonald’s before the company made its decision to pull tomatoes, FDA spokeswoman Kimberly Rawlings said.

Federal investigators know that certain types of tomatoes are safe — such as cherry and grape — and certain locales are safe because harvest times and distribution patterns don’t match the salmonella outbreak, said Dr. David Acheson, the FDA’s assistant commissioner for food protection.

Salmonella is a bacterial infection that lives in the intestinal tracts of humans and other animals. The bacteria are usually spread by eating foods contaminated with animal feces.

Most infected people suffer fever, diarrhea and abdominal cramps starting 12 to 72 hours after infection. The illness tends to last four to seven days.

Many people recover without treatment. However, severe infection and even death is possible. Infants, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems are at greatest risk for severe infections.

Health officials say they are aware of 13 tomato-associated outbreaks since 1990. The largest was in 2004, when more than 500 cases occurred in at least five states, linked to a convenience store chain.

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