Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/fda-expands-search-for-source-of-salmonella-outbreak Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that it still did not know the source of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened 869 people and plans to expand its search beyond tomatoes, the first suspected culprit. A USA Today reporter updates the story. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JUDY WOODRUFF: The search has gone on for more than a month, but health officials have still not identified the cause of a sweeping salmonella outbreak linked to produce. The main focus has been on several types of commonly eaten tomatoes.More than 800 people in 36 states and the District of Columbia have fallen ill since late April when the problem was first detected; 179 people became ill in the last month alone.Teams of government inspectors have been deployed to tomato-growing regions, like Florida and Mexico. Laboratory testing of some 1,700 domestic and imported samples of primarily tomatoes have all come back negative, but investigators have not yet taken tomatoes off the table.DR. DAVID ACHESON, Associate Commissioner for Foods: I want to repeat: Tomatoes are still the lead suspect and are a major focus. They are still being investigated. JUDY WOODRUFF: However, the Food and Drug Administration is now expanding the search to other produce. The prolonged mystery surrounding the source of so many illnesses is hurting the produce industry, which has lost more than $100 million thus far. TOM DEARDORFF, Tomato Farmer: Really angry, really frustrated. Obviously, we just wish that the FDA and CDC would get together and get this problem over with. There's going to be tomatoes in the field that go overripe, that go unharvested. JUDY WOODRUFF: In the meantime, consumers are urged to avoid raw red plum, red Roma, or red round tomatoes, unless they were grown in specific states or countries that the FDA has cleared of suspicion.For more about this investigation, we turn again to Elizabeth Weise. She covers food safety for USA Today, and she joins us now from San Francisco.