Federal officials quickly isolated the contamination

Oct. 14, 2011 - PRLog -- The Food and Drug Administration is still investigating its cause. Officials have said they were looking at the farm's water supply and possible animal intrusions among other things.But farmers said the outbreak's source mattered little. In recent weeks, Van Bebber fielded more than 300 phone calls from customers asking whether his cantaloupes were contaminated. This despite the fact that the company has putCalifornia stickers on every piece of fruit; that the California Cantaloupe Advisory Board sent letters to customers informing them that California's crop is safe; and that supermarkets have put up signs explaining that California cantaloupes were not part of the recall.

Growers are making similar efforts in Arizona, the second-biggest cantaloupe-producing state, where the season has just begun.Cindi Pearson of Santa Rosa Produce in Maricopa, Ariz., who started harvesting 3,000 acres of cantaloupes last week, is labeling fruit with Arizona-grown stickers. She has placed laminated placards on the backs of her trucks to convince customers her fruit is safe.

On an October day in the midst of harvest season, two farmworkers sat idly in their home in a Central California town that touts itself as "the cantaloupe center of the world."Instead of picking the melons and supervising a work crew, Dora and David Elias of Mendota were unemployed — laid off along with hundreds of others as the cantaloupe listeria outbreak traced to Colorado rippled across the nation.

"Consumers don't understand that the Colorado melons are gone and it's the start of a different season," Pearson said. "Right now, cantaloupes should be the safest product to eat. But all people see is the deaths and sicknesses, and that image is getting reinforced in their minds. It's devastating to us."
The pangs were particularly felt here in the top cantaloupe-producing state. Sales of California cantaloupes plummeted, even though their fruit was perfectly safe to eat. Farmers abandoned fields. Farmworkers lost jobs."We can't sell the fruit," said Rodney Van Bebber, sales manager for Mendota-based Pappas Produce Company. "Retail stores are taking cantaloupes off the shelves, and growers are disking in their fruit because people are afraid to eat them."
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Federal officials quickly isolated the contamination to Jensen Farms in the Colorado town of Holly, which recalled its cantaloupes in mid-September. The tainted cantaloupes should be out of stores now because their shelf life is about two weeks.But the number of deaths has continued to grow because symptoms of listeria can take up to two months to appear. As of Wednesday, the outbreak was linked to 23 deaths and 116 sicknesses, making it the deadliest known outbreak of foodborne illness in the U.S. in more than 25 years.

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