November/December 2004
Local Markets for Commercial Produce - A Health Hazard?
A significant health threat is being posed by an underground market in which as much as 125 tons of processing tomatoes from the central San Joaquin Valley are being diverted daily for sale as fresh tomatoes in Southern California and Mexico. Tomato industry leaders say the diversion of the tomatoes skirts numerous restrictions on inspection and leaves them vulnerable for blame in case of an outbreak of a foodborne illness. Nate Esformes, president and co-owner of Triple E Produce in Tracy, who grows fresh tomatoes, was quoted as saying, "If tomatoes go into the marketplace and cause you to get sick and that's on the evening news and people stop buying tomatoes because of that report, shame on all of us."
Growers and shippers of California's roma tomatoes, a popular retail variety, are talking with representatives of the California Department of Food and Agriculture about forming a new marketing order to tighten standards on packing of the fresh tomatoes, making it easier to trace tomatoes back to the farm and increase surveillance to thwart the underground operations. Ed Beckman, president of the California Tomato Commission in Fresno, was cited as saying the move is linked to a directive from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to the fresh tomato industry to strengthen "good agricultural practices" to guard against such threats as Salmonella, and that the threat of Salmonella from unwashed roma tomatoes is real. Hundreds were sickened with the illness in July in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia. The illnesses were blamed on roma tomatoes that were field packed in Florida and South Carolina.
Growers of roma processing tomatoes can find themselves with acres of the fruit still in the fields and no way to sell it because demand from processing plants has already been met. Beckman was cited as saying that's the point at which farmers may be drawn into the underground scheme as a way of getting at least some money for their unharvested crop, adding, "Someone will approach a grower and say, “Fresh tomatoes are selling at $20 a box. Instead of going through a shipper, I'll work a deal with you. I'll provide the boxes and the crew and we'll pay you for the tomatoes.” Beckman said the farmer will likely get only $1 or $2 a box, but the deals are in cash, and he believes there are at least 40 farmers who have participated in the paperless, for-cash scheme in Fresno, Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties. Fresno County is the state's leading processing tomato producer with a 2003 value at $272 million, almost half of the $571 million statewide.
Esformes said that his boxes apparently wound up in the hands of an underground crew after a recycling operation sold them. They had been used in shipments he sent to various supermarkets. Esformes said that he could wrongfully be linked to an illness caused by someone eating unwashed fruit from one of his used boxes. Beckman was cited as saying there have been at least eight operations raided by agricultural inspectors in Fresno, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties this year. Beckman also said members of the California Fresh Growers Exchange, a cooperative that is separate from the commission, are considering taking legal actions against the growers who enter into the underground agreements, those who oversee such harvests, and what he termed "processors," at least two of them in Los Angeles and one in Mexicali, Mexico. (The Fresno Bee, 10/19/04).
