EL PASO, Texas -- At Andre's Pizza in West El Paso, tomatoes are everywhere. In the pizza sauce or as a dipping sauce, and of course raw tomatoes for salads and sandwiches. It's the raw tomatoes that have been linked to a salmonella outbreak.

"They said that there was an outbreak, it had hit New Mexico, and that it wasn't really in effect for El Paso yet," said Sam Beckman with Andre's Pizza.

Outbreak or not, Beckman said their tomatoes go through a rigorous cleaning process.

"It's a standard procedure we do here with all our vegetables that come in loose," said Beckman. "We go ahead and wash it in an ice bath before we go ahead and process it."

At Andre's Pizza, they got word about the tomatoes not from the health department, but from the media.

"Interviews like this, we have press releases go out so that the newspapers can publish those, and whatever other avenues that we can approach," said Dr. Bobby Jones, deputy director of the Department of Public Health.

Jones said they use the media to get the word out, and only go into action when something happens in El Paso.

"If we have cases, then we start investigating, and we're going to try and determine what they have, see what products they were eating," said Jones.

At Andre's Pizza, it's better safe than sorry.

"You just don't know what's going to come in there, these come from farms all over the country, so it's best to take whatever precautions that we can to make sure our customers get the best quality," said Beckman.