The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) wrongly accused tomatoes of being the source of a food-borne outbreak of salmonella in June 2008. Americans stopped eating tomatoes, and Florida’s industry sustained losses of $100 million as tomatoes rotted in the fields and sat in warehouses and in trucks.
Reggie Brown, executive vice president of the
Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, will be the guest speaker at this month's
Orlando Area Chapter luncheon. He will discuss what the industry did in the first several days of the crisis, how the situation played out, and what is being done to ensure a similar debacle doesn’t happen again.
The luncheon will take place at the
Citrus Club in downtown Orlando on Thursday, March 19. Registration and networking begin at 11:30 a.m.; luncheon begins at noon. This is a joint luncheon of the Orlando chapters of FPRA and PRSA. Register online at
www.fpra-orlando.org.