Dive Brief:
- A federal court has thrown out a lawsuit by Florida tomato growers who sued the Food and Drug Administration over erroneous warnings about salmonella in 2008. The growers plan to appeal.
- The growers claimed that the FDA's warning that consumers not eat tomatoes cost them hundreds of millions of dollars. The FDA warning, which ran from June 3 through July 17 of that year, was canceled when regulators traced a salmonella outbreak to serrano and jalapeno peppers, not tomatoes.
- The court ruled that a press release, which is how the FDA issued its warning, does not constitute a "taking" of property by the government, regardless of its impact on sales.
Dive Insight:
The growers have argued that when the government acts in error so as to hurt a business, it's comparable to when the government seizes land under eminent domain law ... which obliges the government to compensate property owners for "taking" property. That's an interesting argument. And one that may make its way to a higher court.
The case may also be of interest to the companies and courts in the Asia-Pacific currently embroiled in a similar case about false-alarm warnings over food safety.