News 12 at 6:00, July 12, 2008

Aiken, SC --- Red, ripe, and ready to go. Locally grown tomatoes stocked for sale at the tomato festival. Valerie Zielinski spent the day working at the Farmers Market in Aiken.

"It's straight from the fields to the table. Nothing gets shipped or packaged, we don't deal with any of that," Valerie Zielinski said.

She's selling cucumbers, squash, eggplant, and tomatoes. And it's the tomatoes that sold the quickest. In fact, she started the morning with 13 baskets full of them, and is almost down to a half basket. She has been coming to the farmer's market for ten years. The best part for Valerie? The produce is all local, which she says set's these tomatoes apart from the ones affected in the nationwide tomato recall.

"We know how we grow them. What's put on them. Nothing is sprayed. And it comes straight from the field to here," Zielinski said.

And shoppers told News 12 they came out for one reason. Looking to buy tomatoes grown locally.

"I haven't bought any tomatoes at the Supermarket. But here, I trust that they're going to be clean and fresh," Gladys Olson said.

Even with the salmonella scare, shoppers here aren't worried. Valerie says the outbreak has actually helped business. Because as tomatoes continue to rapidly disappear at grocery stores, it's a different story here, where they can't keep the tables stocked fast enough.

"Everything around here has moved more and moved a lot quicker because it's been, they know everything is locally grown here," Zielinski said.

As the FDA investigation continues into the salmonella outbreak, consumers should not eat raw red tomatoes, red roma, and red round tomatoes unless they are grown in an unaffected area. Georgia and South Carolina are considered safe.