So yesterday I went to the newest sandwich shop in Our Fair Town, a newly-opened D’Angelo’s (a regional chain that should be recognizable to anyone from New England), and found myself face-to-face with The Killer Tomatoes. No tomato on your sandwich, pal. Some guy Texas died from a bad tomato, so we’re not using ANY tomatoes.

Sheesh.

Look, check out this list of how many states DO NOT have a problem with salmonella in their tomato production stream. Now, granted, the mechanism of distribution for food products in this country means that quite often the produce you are eating came from some place very far away from where you live, but would it really be THAT hard for fast food operators and restaurants to find out where their produce was coming from? ‘Cause, if they came from any of these 28 states or the several foreign countries on the list, there’s no reason to pull them from the shelves except SCAREMONGERING.

Except, of course, the opportunity for all of these guys to save a couple of bucks for a month or so by not buying tomatoes. You see, tomatoes are among the most expensive produce items commonly purchased by food sellers. They’re difficult to ship long distances because of their relative fragility and are more prone to price fluctuations due to weather concerns than hardier produce. You might remember a couple of years ago when the price of tomatoes went through the roof because of bad weather, and a lot of restaurants either stopped buying tomatoes or raised their prices for items that included tomatoes. So here they have the perfect excuse to not buy them, even though the vast majority of commercial buyers of produce are not getting their tomatoes from the affected areas.

Now, I know full well that there aren’t a whole lot of locallay grown tomatoes available in New England any time before mid-July, but I know from buying tomatoes at the greengrocer that our produce comes predominantly from California or Florida, neither of which are associated with this problem. So I would like to respectfully ask all the cheapskate restaurant bean counters and fearmongering PR people to STFU and bring back my tomatoes.

Thank you.