Food poisoning from garden tomatoes - Ask Extension
Hello, we are these tomatoes and then we got food poisoning. We have a squirrel eating out tomatoes and I wondered if it was contamination from the sq...
Knowledgebase
Food poisoning from garden tomatoes #884283
Asked September 06, 2024, 10:57 AM EDT
Hello, we are these tomatoes and then we got food poisoning. We have a squirrel eating out tomatoes and I wondered if it was contamination from the squirrel. But the plant also has this disease and I’m not sure what it is.
Kent County Michigan
Expert Response
Hi;
It is very difficult to say how you got the food poisoning because there are so many ways you could have ingested some bacteria that would have caused it. The bacteria may have been on the tomato, the squirrel, in squirrel feces, or even something entirely different that you ate. For tomatoes with disease issues, like the blossom rot and leaf spot I am seeing in your second and third photos, one of those (bl rot) is decaying tomato tissue and the other (leaf spot) is a fungus on the leaves. Neither of those is directly related to food born pathogens yet food born pathogens can be present in many place so it is very difficult to say where you got the bad bacteria.
In general, tomatoes damaged by animals and which are rotting should not be eaten to be safe. We have a lot of great resources related to food safety. Here is one below to start. Hope you are feeling better!
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/remember_food_safety_when_youre_enjoying_fresh_fruit_and_vegetables
It is very difficult to say how you got the food poisoning because there are so many ways you could have ingested some bacteria that would have caused it. The bacteria may have been on the tomato, the squirrel, in squirrel feces, or even something entirely different that you ate. For tomatoes with disease issues, like the blossom rot and leaf spot I am seeing in your second and third photos, one of those (bl rot) is decaying tomato tissue and the other (leaf spot) is a fungus on the leaves. Neither of those is directly related to food born pathogens yet food born pathogens can be present in many place so it is very difficult to say where you got the bad bacteria.
In general, tomatoes damaged by animals and which are rotting should not be eaten to be safe. We have a lot of great resources related to food safety. Here is one below to start. Hope you are feeling better!
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/remember_food_safety_when_youre_enjoying_fresh_fruit_and_vegetables
