# Tomato scare in the U.S. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 18, 2008, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tomato-scare-in-the-u-s/456888 "2008-07-18T00:19:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2008, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tomato-scare-in-the-u-s/456888/21 "2008-07-19T12:32:08Z")
[QUOTE=Darryl Lict] Here you go. [Laser tagged vegetables.](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/dining/19fruit.html?pagewanted=print) [/QUOTE] That’s a step in the right direction, but what I had in mind (half tongue-in-cheek) was altering genes so the barcode would grow with the plant. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2008, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tomato-scare-in-the-u-s/456888/22 "2008-07-19T13:15:06Z")
Manure is often mixed with water and sprayed to fertilize _pastures_ in these parts, but I don’t know whether it’s ever used in that form on food crops. Both hog manure and chicken manure get sprayed by specially equipped tanker vehicles, which pick up their supply from chicken farms and hog farms. (In fact, it may be that the tankers are owned by the chicken farmers, as a means of enhancing their revenues.) ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2008, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tomato-scare-in-the-u-s/456888/23 "2008-07-19T16:31:52Z")
Americans are pussies. The natural state of produce is dirty. There are natural contaminants, there are chemical contaminants. In 99% of the world throughout 99% of history people have combated this by thoroughly washing their food, or cooking it. It’s only in this brief moment in a small bit of the earth we have regulated safe-to-eat-raw produce into existence. Turns out that isn’t a 100% perfect system. Who’d have thunk? Wash your veggies. If you eat them raw and are immune compromised, do what everyone else in the world does and soak them with a few drops of bleach. You may get sick now and them, but thats how life is. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2008, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tomato-scare-in-the-u-s/456888/24 "2008-07-19T17:35:14Z")
Don’t know if it’s been pointed out yet in this thread, but the spinach outbreak was traced to wild swine that contaminated the crops with their feces. It wasn’t “us” that caused this problem. It was the indigenous wildlife. > **[Escherichia coli O157:H7 in Feral Swine near Spinach Fields and Cattle,...](https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/13/12/07-0763_article)** > > E. coli O157 in Feral Swine, California ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2008, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tomato-scare-in-the-u-s/456888/25 "2008-07-21T00:45:13Z")
[QUOTE=Telemark] My BIL is a winemaker and this certainly isn’t true for any winery I’ve seen. Most wines come from blends of grapes grown in a variety of places. There’s no way to trace things back to a patch of ground. By the time you get to bottling you have little idea where the fruit came from. [/QUOTE] You can’t do it directly from the bar code on the bottle, but that leads you to a database which goes to another database which eventually gets you the information. And yes, the fact that wine is blended is covered. [Here](http://www.gs1.org/docs/traceability/GS1_wine_traceability.pdf) is a 30 page document about the standard - warning - pdf. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2008, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tomato-scare-in-the-u-s/456888/26 "2008-07-24T07:03:31Z")
Tazmans idea of farming seems to be a lot different than what happens here in the Midwest USA. Manure (mostly solid, not liquid that can be ‘sprayed’) is spread on the fields in the fall, after the crops have been harvested. Then the field is plowed, and the manure pushed under & mixed with the dirt. Then it sits over a Minnesota winter, and the spring rains, before the field is planted again. There are few bacteria that can survive a frozen Minnesota winter! And, really, humans have been using manure (both animal and human) as fertilizer for something like 4-5,000 years, and the species has survived and even grown. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tomato-scare-in-the-u-s/456888.md?page=1)