Tracking the Business Behind the Tomato

By Jonathan Higuera
June 17, 2008 12:57 PM

E. Scott Reckard, a business writer for the Los Angeles Times, had already put in a full day of work on a recent Sunday when he got a call from an editor at the paper. The editor told him about the June 7 warning by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about tomatoes causing salmonella poisoning.

The editor wanted to know if the warning had had any effect on tomato sales in the local market.

So together, Reckard and his editor started making calls to find out if area restaurants and grocery stores were pulling tomatoes and other fresh tomato products off shelves and menus.

Some were. In fact there were enough such cases that Reckard was able to deliver a story for Monday’s paper.

“I would rather not have worked that long day,” said Reckard. “But it’s the kind of thing that once you determine it is serious and a potential health threat, you can’t really sit on it. You have to get it into the paper.”

The tomato salmonella story is an example of how journalists and the press can be a tool for the public good. It’s simple, old-fashioned public service journalism. But the story also goes deeper than just alerting residents to a health scare.

It has major implications for a local economy, the agriculture industry and, of course, consumers.

One way to be prepared for these stories is to follow the industry before the crisis hits, says Susan Salisbury, a staff writer at The Palm Beach Post in Florida. She did four stories during the past week on the current tomato situation. Florida is a major provider of U.S. tomatoes during the winter and warnings on tomatoes is important news for her readership.

Because she had already written stories earlier in the year on new safety standards the Florida tomato industry imposed on itself in 2007, she had a bank of sources to call on, from tomato industry officials to food poisoning experts.

It also helped that she had covered the eColi spinach story in 2006.

“If you know the ins and outs of the industry, it’s a big help,” she said. “You don’t have to ask them for data. You know you can get it from the USDA Web site.”

On the tomato story, Salisbury was able to work the phones from the office while an intern was in the field interviewing consumers and retailers.

“It really helped to have two people on it,” she said.

Jim Downing, who covers food and agricultures for The Sacramento Bee, agreed that knowing the industry can help you understand the story more clearly.

“There are ways to read between the lines of what officials say,” he said. “You can tell which way the wind is blowing if you understand how the industry works.”

At the Rocky Mountain News, which made the tomato scare story its front page cover story on June 10, one confirmed case of salmonella poisoning in the area and the decision by McDonald’s to stop putting tomatoes on its hamburgers was all it took to give the story bigger play. It also didn’t hurt that a short story on its Web site Monday got many hits.

“One thing about tomatoes is it is such a pervasive ingredient,” said Joyzelle Davis, the paper’s retail restaurant and health care reporter. “It’s something everyone can relate to.”

Her story covered the mad scramble restaurants and retailers went through to pull fresh tomatoes off shelves and from menus.

“The one point I wanted to get across was that restaurant operators and caterers had to throw their tomatoes out while the bigger grocery chains were able to re-source their tomatoes.”

For the Times’ Reckard, the point of his long day was even simpler: consumers should be aware about what type of tomatoes they buy and eat until the source of the salmonella could be traced.

“Occasionally you get to do stuff that makes you feel like you’ve helped a little bit,” he said.

To read stories from the reporters quoted in this story, go to:

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/09/business/fi-tomatoes9

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/state/content/business/epaper/2008/06/10/0610flatomatoes.html

http://sacbee.com/101/story/1001226.html

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jun/09/tomatoes-menu-chipotle-others/

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism