FYI

[BVGardener]

Just saw this article a few minutes ago regarding salmonella and uncooked tomatoes.

Jay

News article.

[HakaiRah]

This is one of the prime advantages of growing your own 'raw' tomatoes for personal consumption. It helps to know that you didn't spread uncomposted chicken poo on your beds, or more importantly you didn't have chickens perching on your tomato cages and pooping on your tomatoes. Not to say home tomatoes are perfectly safe, any bird could potentially contribute a present. Especially if you have wires/tree branches/perches over your garden.

If I learned anything in microbiology it is that something like this is almost always caused by someone being careless, and with chickens wandering around fields on organic farms to control pests I'm not surprised chicken poop in the produce could be a problem. Though I'll take chicken poo over pesticides.

In short, tomatoes themselves don't naturally have salmonella on them. There has to be a contributing source. I know I'll still be bringing my salt shaker into the garden once my plants start producing.

[BVGardener]

Very true and as mentioned in the article, they were looking for a specific source of the contaminated tomatoes.

Sorry for the abbreviated and short title to this thread but I was in a hurry and wanted to get it posted.
Jay

[HakaiRah]

Thanks for bringing it up, it is a good reminder to be careful with what you choose to eat raw. When in doubt, cook it out!

[gardenpaws_VA]

You might want to look at the discussion on Thread 8810 - I've posted a couple of links to papers/reports on internal contamination.

Robin