To Foil Salmonella, Cook Your Tomatoes(porous skin won't necessarily keep bad bugs out)

[RedEarth]

To Foil Salmonella, Cook Your Tomatoes
The porous skin won't necessarily keep bad bugs out
By Nancy Shute
Posted June 10, 2008


Why doesn't washing tomatoes make them safe to eat? That's Question No. 1 as restaurants and supermarkets dump fresh tomatoes, and federal inspectors race to pinpoint the source of a salmonella outbreak in fresh tomatoes that has spread to 17 states, sickening at least 167 people.

The unpleasant answer: Bad bugs like salmonella don't just lie on the surface of plants. They may also enter in, where they can’t be washed away or killed by sterilizing solutions commonly used in produce processing. Some state and local health departments, as well as news media, have reported that it's OK to eat tomatoes as long as they’ve been washed. Not so, says Doug Powell, a plant pathologist and director of the International Food Safety Network at Kansas State University. Tomatoes and canteloupes, which both have soft, porous skin, can absorb water during processing, and also may absorb pathogens in irrigation water. It's not known if that happened in this case, Powell says. But that's all the more reason to shun tomatoes. "In these situations, it's important to say that washing's not enough. You gotta cook it."

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/2008/06/10/to-foil-salmonella-cook-your-tomatoes.html