After the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning saying that tomatoes from some parts of the country have been contaminated with salmonella, University Dining officials discontinued the use tomatoes at all locations Monday, according to University Dining Business Officer Randy Lait.
Lait said the first sign of any problem came in an e-mail from the University’s food distributor at the end of last week.
“Monday morning, the FDA expanded the tomato recall for all round tomatoes nationwide,” he said. “It got upgraded to more of a generalized warning to look out for all tomatoes because they were not sure where the source of the [contamination] was coming from.”
As of Tuesday evening, Lait said the source of the outbreak had still not been pinpointed but that the FDA had started clearing tomatoes from certain states.
“What I’m getting now is reports of different crops being cleared,” he said. “When they start to say that crops from certain states are available, then we have to go to our distributor and find out where those tomatoes are coming from.”
According to Lait, the University pulled tomatoes from Taco Bell, Chick-Fil-A, Port City Java and dining halls.
Although North Carolina is on the FDA’s list of states not associated with the outbreak, Lait said dining will more than likely wait until today to start using tomatoes again.
For businesses around campus, like Hillsborough Street’s Red Hot & Blue, the safety of tomato products has been the chief concern since the FDA released its warning over the weekend.
Carmen Moran, a manager at the restaurant, said the Hillsborough Street location has been lucky because its tomatoes come from local farms that have been unaffected by the outbreak.
“It makes it a lot easier to support your business,” she said. “To not have to change recipes is a definite advantage.”
Like University Dining, Red Hot & Blue contacted its supplier after finding out about the FDA’s recall of round tomatoes, roma tomatoes and red plum tomatoes.
“The owner called our supplier Tuesday,” Moran said. “They assured us that their tomatoes were cleared and that everything was good. Since then we have just been reassuring all of our customers that our food is safe.”
A manager at the Western Boulevard Food Lion said his store has been affected by the tomato scare and is not selling tomatoes but could not comment further on the situation at his particular location.
For students, both on campus and off, the recent scare over the spread of salmonella has prompted increased concern over where local grocery stores and restaurants are getting tomatoes from.
Kelsey Mitman, a senior in business management, said she hopes consumers should not have to be overly concerned about the safety of tomatoes in North Carolina.
“I would think that restaurants and grocery stores would follow all FDA regulations, so the customers shouldn’t have to worry about bad tomatoes,” she said. “But if I knew that tomatoes were coming from an infected source, I would definitely not eat or buy from those places.”
