Tomato Growers Lose Millions Thanks to False FDA Warning, Courts’ Failure to Act
10th December 2016
Last week the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal government could not be held financially responsible for issuing erroneous warnings about the source of an outbreak of foodborne illness that caused the loss of millions of dollars of tomatoes.
The warnings, issued by the FDA in 2008, turned out to be wildly inaccurate and deeply damaging.
Government employees routinely take actions that would put private actors in jail or cost them huge fines. And yet they skate — nobody gets fired, nobody goes to jail.