The recent tomato scare cost Florida tomato farmers more than a hundred million dollars in lost crops. Tomatoes were never linked to the 12-hundred Salmonella cases nationwide. And tomato farmers say they got a raw deal.

Dustin Ford has lunch on his mind.

“You’ve got to have a tomato on a cheeseburger.”

But not long ago Dustin was eating his burgers without tomatoes.

“I got scared of buying tomatoes from anywhere.”

The Food and Drug Association named tomatoes as a possible source of the salmonella outbreak. Days into the scare the FDA said Florida tomatoes were okay.

Despite being placed on the safe-to-eat list, people bought other produce instead, and millions of Florida tomatoes rotted on the vine.

Terry McElroy a spokesman for Florida’s Department of Administration says in some cases farmers were losing money by harvesting crops.

“It’s cost effective, as unbelievable as it sounds, to let them rot on the vine, instead to spend six or eight dollars a box to pick them, pack them, ship them, if you’re not going to have a buyer.”

Tomato farmer and packaging plant operator Graves Williams says farmers at his plant lost more than 12 million dollars.

“We couldn’t give them away.”

Williams is calculating his losses. He’ll give his findings to US lawmakers who will ask Congress to compensate Florida’s farmers who says they got a raw deal.

“I’m used to hurricanes, I’m used to pests. I never thought the federal Government would be the pest that put me out of business.”

Williams fears if something isn’t done, some farmers will have to sell their land.

US Congressman Allen Boyd will meet with the Florida Commissioner of Agriculture and tomato farmers Monday.