Peanut Company Knew Its Plant Was Contaminated With Salmonella

By Nancy Shute

 

More bad news on salmonella tainted peanut butter: The peanut processor knew in 2007 that its plant was contaminated with potentially deadly salmonella but kept shipping out product anyway, according to officials at the Food and Drug Administration. With so much stuff in the pipeline, expect more sick people and more recalls, FDA officials said yesterday.

 

This outbreak has already killed eight people and sickened at least 501 so far, making it the most deadly food contamination outbreak in at least the past 20 years. Victims include a 72-year-old Minnesota woman who died after eating peanut butter in a nursing home, and Christopher Meunier, a 7-year-old boy from South Burlington, Vt., who fell ill and was hospitalized in November after eating peanut butter crackers. He has since recovered.

Peanut butter has traditionally been considered a low-risk food. It didn't turn up on the food safety worry list until 2007, when a salmonella outbreak was traced to jars of Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter from a ConAgra plant in Georgia. This current outbreak is much, much larger, because the implicated Peanut Corp. of America plant in Blakely, Ga., has distributed huge amounts of peanut butter and peanut paste to manufacturers of hundreds of products, from Trader Joe's Nutty Chocolate Chewy Coated & Drizzled Granola Bars to ShopRite Peanut Butter and Cheese Cracker Snacks. Add to that the fact that many of the tainted products are the sorts of things that people stockpile at home and work for snacks and lunchbox treats, and it's easy to see how the outbreak could continue for weeks, if not months.

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/living-well-usn/2009/01/28/peanut-company-knew-its-plant-was-contaminated-with-salmonella.html