I also had a nice chat with Susan Salisbury of the Palm Beach Post Staff Writer how the “Tomato scare unlikely to alter laws.”

The salmonella outbreak that has sickened at least 167 people in 17 states isn’t bad enough to generate national food-safety laws, said a leading lawyer specializing in food-borne illness cases.

"It is going to take, unfortunately, an outbreak like the Jack in the Box outbreak in 1993, where you had 600 people sick and four little kids die," said Bill Marler, a Seattle lawyer.

The current outbreak, which dates to mid-April, probably is larger than is being reported, he said.

"For every person they are counting, there are about 40 other people who got sick that they are not counting," Marler said. "This outbreak is a lot bigger than 167 people. It is 40 times that number."

The FDA recommends consuming raw red plum, raw red Roma, or raw red round tomatoes only if grown and harvested from the following areas that HAVE NOT BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH THE OUTBREAK:

Alabama
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Delaware
Florida (counties of: Jackson, Gadsden, Leon, Jefferson, Madison, Suwannee, Hamilton, Hillsborough, Polk, Manatee, Hardee, DeSoto, Sarasota, Highlands, Pasco, Sumter, Citrus, Hernando, Charlotte)*
Georgia
Hawaii
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Mississippi
New Jersey
New York
Nebraska
North Carolina
Ohio
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Belgium
Canada
Dominican Republic
Guatemala
Israel
Netherlands
Puerto Rico