SATURDAY JUNE 20, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) -- After more than one month of struggling, the Food and Drug Administration has finally had some clue as to where the tomatoes that caused the ongoing salmonella outbreak came from. Now it’s official that Florida and Mexico are prime suspects.

On June 20, the FDA announced on its website that "the agency has completed the traceback for some of the tomatoes associated with the outbreak.   The agency has been able to trace the pathway of some tomatoes from the point of purchase or consumption to each point on the distribution chain down to certain farms in Mexico and Florida."

Now the agency is narrowing, not widening the investigation. Teams of multi-disciplinary experts will be dispatched to both Mexico and Florida to conduct joint inspection of the farms and other critical points on the supply chain where the tomatoes may have been tainted.

Regulators in Mexico and Florida will join the FDA for the investigation. In the meantime, the FDA will continue securitize samples of tomatoes and conduct traceback activities.

But according to William Marler, an attorney based out of Seattle, Washington who claimed to have been contacted by a dozen of people who fell ill after eating tomatoes, the contamination is home grown in Florida, but imported from Mexico.

As follows, Marler cited on his blog on June 200 from an interview of Dr. David Acheson the FDA food safety agent with Fox News Service:

"The epidemiological investigation has narrowed the problem to raw red plum, red Roma or red round tomatoes. And the evidence suggests the tainted fruit came from Florida, where farmers were harvesting when the earliest known victim fell ill on April 10.

Florida "fits with the time frame," and investigators have not found evidence that could rule out the state, David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's associate commissioner for foods, said Thursday in a conference call with reporters.

He said contrary to some earlier reports, he knows of no evidence showing tainted fruit came from Mexico."

Early, one cluster of nine illness associated with eating tomatoes at two restaurants of the same chain was probed by health officials of Illinois state and the FDA.   Another cluster was also reported in New York City.

On June 20, the FDA said a new cluster of illnesses linked to consumption of tomatoes had merged in Texas recently. The agency hoped that this would provide further information on the source of the contamination.

The salmonella outbreak linked to consumption of raw red tomatoes has resulted illnesses in 552 people in 32 states and the District of Columbia, according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 53 hospitalizations resulted from the salmonella outbreak, but no one died.

Editor's note; The outbreak may have caused some inconvenience to some grocery stores. Yesterday reports came to say that tomatoes disappeared from a local store in Portland, Oregon, which usually sells lots of produce from Florida and California.