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By Jane Zhang & Mike Esterl @wsj.com
The federal government said it didn't make any progress in lowering the rate of food poisoning in the past four years, underscoring the need to plug holes in the nation's food-safety system.
The incidence of human infections caused by salmonella, E. coli and seven other common pathogens changed little from 2004 to 2008, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. Fresh produce, in particular, has led to more illnesses and large outbreaks. One salmonella outbreak -- eventually traced to Mexican peppers -- sickened more than 1,400 people last year.
"We recognize that we have reached a plateau in the prevention of foodborne disease, and there must be new efforts to develop and evaluate food-safety practices from the farm to the table," said Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the CDC's Division of Foodborne, Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases.
The CDC report will likely add fuel to the debate in Washington over how to improve food regulation, currently handled by a patchwork of federal and state agencies.
David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's associate commissioner for foods, said the CDC report "underscores the need for change." The FDA needs to conduct more inspections and develop a system to trace contaminants quickly, a process that often takes weeks now, he said.
The FDA has become more aggressive in monitoring food safety, Dr. Acheson said. The FDA recently warned consumers against eating any products containing pistachios after salmonella was found in some pistachio products -- even though no illnesses were confirmed.
The CDC's annual report on foodborne illness uses data from 10 states, along with the CDC, U.S. Department of Agriculture and FDA.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Calif. plant recalls 1M pounds of pistachios
Posted: 07:56 PM ET
WASHINGTON (CNN) — A California food processing plant is voluntarily recalling up to 1 million pounds of roasted pistachio products that may have been contaminated with salmonella, the FDA announced Monday.
The nuts came from Setton Farms in Terra Bella, California — about 75 miles south of Fresno — and were largely distributed in 2,000 pound shipments to food wholesalers who would then package them for resale.
No illnesses have been linked to this case, said Dr. David Acheson, FDA’s associate commissioner. But salmonella strains were found during routine test by Kraft Foods, which purchased pistachios from Setton Farms, he said.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — A California food processing plant is voluntarily recalling up to 1 million pounds of roasted pistachio products that may have been contaminated with salmonella, the FDA announced Monday.
The nuts came from Setton Farms in Terra Bella, California — about 75 miles south of Fresno — and were largely distributed in 2,000 pound shipments to food wholesalers who would then package them for resale.
No illnesses have been linked to this case, said Dr. David Acheson, FDA’s associate commissioner. But salmonella strains were found during routine test by Kraft Foods, which purchased pistachios from Setton Farms, he said.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Food Safety Problems Elude Private Inspectors
March 6, 2009
New York Times:
By MICHAEL MOSS and ANDREW MARTIN
When food industry giants like Kellogg want to ensure that American consumers are being protected from contaminated products, they rely on private inspectors like Eugene A. Hatfield. So last spring Mr. Hatfield headed to the Peanut Corporation of America plant in southwest Georgia to make sure its chopped nuts, paste and peanut butter were safe to use in things as diverse as granola bars and ice cream.
The peanut company, though, knew in advance that Mr. Hatfield was coming. He had less than a day to check the entire plant, which processed several million pounds of peanuts a month.
Mr. Hatfield, 66, an expert in fresh produce, was not aware that peanuts were readily susceptible to salmonella — which he was not required to test for anyway. And while Mr. Hatfield was inspecting the plant to reassure Kellogg and other food companies of its suitability as a supplier, the Peanut Corporation was paying for his efforts.
“The overall food safety level of this facility was considered to be: SUPERIOR,” he concluded in his March 27, 2008, report for his employer, the American Institute of Baking, which performs audits for major food companies. A copy of the audit was obtained by The New York Times.
Federal investigators later discovered that the dilapidated plant was ravaged by salmonella and had been shipping tainted peanuts and paste for at least nine months. But they were too late to prevent what has become one of the nation’s worst known outbreaks of food-borne disease in recent years, in which nine are believed to have died and an estimated 22,500 were sickened.
With government inspectors overwhelmed by the task of guarding the nation’s food supply, the job of monitoring food plants has in large part fallen to an army of private auditors like Mr. Hatfield. And the problems go well beyond peanuts.
An examination of the largest food poisoning outbreaks in recent years — in products as varied as spinach, pet food, and a children’s snack, Veggie Booty — show that auditors failed to detect problems at plants whose contaminated products later sickened consumers.
In one case involving hamburgers fed to schoolchildren, the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company in California passed 17 separate audits in 2007, records show. Then an undercover video made that year showed the plant’s workers using forklifts to force sickly cows into the slaughterhouse, which prompted a recall of 143 million pounds of beef in February 2008.
“The contributions of third-party audits to food safety is the same as the contribution of mail-order diploma mills to education,” said Mansour Samadpour, a Seattle consultant who has worked with companies nationwide to improve food safety.
Audits are not required by the government, but food companies are increasingly requiring suppliers to undergo them as a way to ensure safety and minimize liability. The rigor of audits varies widely and many companies choose the cheapest ones, which cost as little as $1,000, in contrast to the $8,000 the Food and Drug Administration spends to inspect a plant.
Typically, the private auditors inspect only manufacturing plants, not the suppliers that feed ingredients to those facilities. Nor do they commonly test the actual food products for pathogens, even though gleaming production lines can turn out poisoned fare.
As in the Georgia peanut case, auditors are also usually paid by the food plants they inspect, which some experts said could deter them from cracking down. Yet food companies often point to an auditor’s certificate as a seal of approval.
The baking institute, which is based in Manhattan, Kan., and is also known as AIB International, says it inspected more than 10,000 food production sites in 80 countries last year. James R. Munyon, its president and chief executive, said his group’s inspections were reliable and tough, no matter who pays for them, but he declined to elaborate on specific audits.
Kellogg officials declined to be interviewed for this article. The company has said it is reviewing its use of private audits, including those by the American Institute of Baking. Kellogg said it required the Peanut Corporation to provide it with annual audits of the Georgia facility. Kellogg has recalled more than a dozen products, including Keebler crackers and Famous Amos cookies.
The retail giant Costco, which had already limited the institute’s audits to bakery vendors, has now told suppliers to stop using the group altogether.
Both the food industry and federal officials say they are aware of the problems with third-party audits. Nonetheless, the F.D.A. has proposed expanding the role of private auditors to inspect the more than 200,000 foreign facilities that ship food to the United States. The agency has proposed a voluntary certification program that would toughen audit standards and alert federal authorities of problems — an idea that has met stiff resistance from the food industry.
Food safety advocates say that audits can play a useful role in improving sanitation and catching problems. But in case after case, the audits have failed to prevent major outbreaks.
In 2007, Keystone Foods, the Pennsylvania plant that makes Veggie Booty, received an “excellent” rating from the American Institute of Baking. But the audit did not extend to ingredient suppliers, including a New Jersey company whose imported spices from China were tainted with salmonella.
As many as 2,000 people in 19 states were sickened, according to federal estimates. The incident prompted the New York company that sells the snack, Robert’s American Gourmet, to add its own inspections and regularly test ingredients for contamination.
Even when audits do turn up problems, it is up to the discretion of food companies to fix them.
After Nebraska Beef was linked to an E. coli outbreak in 2006, officials from the United States Department of Agriculture found that the company had not carried out the recommendations of auditors who had identified numerous problems at the plant in the preceding months.
Nebraska Beef has disputed its culpability in the outbreak, which sickened at least 17 people. A company spokesman said Thursday that the problems identified in the audit had been corrected but could not provide documents to verify that claim.
Robert A. LaBudde, a food safety expert who has consulted with food companies for 30 years, said, “The only thing that matters is productivity.” He added that “you only get in trouble if someone in the media traces it back to you, and that’s rare, like a meteor strike.”
Dr. LaBudde said a sausage plant hired him five years ago to determine the species of bacillus plaguing its meat. But the owner then refused to complete the testing. “I called them ‘anthrax sausages,’ and said they could be killing older people in the state, and still they wouldn’t do it,” he said, declining to name the company.
There are more than 200 companies and numerous independent operators in private food inspection. Few have grown faster than the American Institute of Baking. In addition to the peanut factories, the organization’s 120 auditors handle clients who process meat, seafood, vegetables, spices, oils and dairy products.
The baking institute also sells educational services to food industry personnel; the Peanut Corporation of America said some of its employees attended the organization’s food safety training classes. Audits provide nearly half the income for the organization, according to tax filings and the organization’s Web site.
Mr. Munyon, the organization’s president, said its auditors were drawn from industry experts with vast experience in food safety. “AIB emphasizes the educational value of its inspection procedure to the management and employees of the facilities it provides services to,” he said.
Mr. Munyon acknowledged that auditors were allowed to solicit contracts from plants that they then audited, but said this posed no ethical issues because the auditors were on salary, not paid by commission. Mr. Hatfield first audited the Peanut Corporation plant in Georgia in 2007 after contacting the plant’s managers to solicit their business.
The American Institute of Baking’s dual role as an educator and inspector troubles some in the food industry, as does its expansion beyond baking audits. Before the salmonella outbreak, Costco had rebuffed repeated proposals by the organization to inspect all its food suppliers.
“The American Institute of Baking is bakery experts,” said R. Craig Wilson, the top food safety official at Costco. “But you stick them in a peanut butter plant or in a beef plant, they are stuffed.”
Costco, Kraft Foods and Darden Restaurants are among a group of food manufacturers and other companies that use detailed plans to prevent food safety hazards. They also supplement third-party audits with their own inspections and testing of ingredients and plant surfaces for microbes.
The American Institute of Baking was not alone in missing the trouble at the Peanut Corporation plant in Blakely, Ga. State inspectors also found only minor problems, while a federal team last month uncovered a number of alarming signs, as well as testing records from the company itself that showed salmonella in its products as far back as June 2007. Federal health officials say there are now 677 officially reported cases of salmonella poisoning in the outbreak, which reflects only about 3 percent of the total number of people sickened.
But the baking institute’s private audit of the peanut plant had particular heft in assuring food makers that the processed peanuts were safe. Plant workers, in interviews with The Times, also cited the audits’ findings when asked why they did not pursue their own concerns about the plant.
Another audit of the peanut plant, by the Michigan-based NSF Cook & Thurber, raises further questions about the usefulness of private audits. That audit found nearly two dozen problems that it characterized as “minor,” but it nonetheless gave the peanut plant an overall score of 91 out of 100.
NSF officials said that for their audits, this was a low score. But the company that paid for the audit, the insurance giant American International Group, then sold the peanut company insurance to cover the costs of recalling products, according to lawyers for the Peanut Corporation.
Mr. Hatfield, who audited the peanut plant for the American Institute of Baking, referred questions to the organization, which said he “is degreed in biology” and “trained to do the job.” In auditing the Blakely plant last March, Mr. Hatfield became concerned about his ability to check the plant thoroughly and asked for more than the one day allotted, according to people familiar with the audit. The Peanut Corporation agreed to pay for the additional time, but only in future audits, according to those people.
Mr. Hatfield checked to see that the plant had a system in place to test its products for contamination, but the audit indicated that he did not ask to see any test results for salmonella and therefore did not know that the plant had found the bacteria.
“I never thought that this bacteria would survive in the peanut butter type environment,” Mr. Hatfield wrote to a food safety expert on Jan. 20, after the deadly salmonella outbreak was made public, according to a copy of his e-mail message. “What the heck is going on??”
New York Times:
By MICHAEL MOSS and ANDREW MARTIN
When food industry giants like Kellogg want to ensure that American consumers are being protected from contaminated products, they rely on private inspectors like Eugene A. Hatfield. So last spring Mr. Hatfield headed to the Peanut Corporation of America plant in southwest Georgia to make sure its chopped nuts, paste and peanut butter were safe to use in things as diverse as granola bars and ice cream.
The peanut company, though, knew in advance that Mr. Hatfield was coming. He had less than a day to check the entire plant, which processed several million pounds of peanuts a month.
Mr. Hatfield, 66, an expert in fresh produce, was not aware that peanuts were readily susceptible to salmonella — which he was not required to test for anyway. And while Mr. Hatfield was inspecting the plant to reassure Kellogg and other food companies of its suitability as a supplier, the Peanut Corporation was paying for his efforts.
“The overall food safety level of this facility was considered to be: SUPERIOR,” he concluded in his March 27, 2008, report for his employer, the American Institute of Baking, which performs audits for major food companies. A copy of the audit was obtained by The New York Times.
Federal investigators later discovered that the dilapidated plant was ravaged by salmonella and had been shipping tainted peanuts and paste for at least nine months. But they were too late to prevent what has become one of the nation’s worst known outbreaks of food-borne disease in recent years, in which nine are believed to have died and an estimated 22,500 were sickened.
With government inspectors overwhelmed by the task of guarding the nation’s food supply, the job of monitoring food plants has in large part fallen to an army of private auditors like Mr. Hatfield. And the problems go well beyond peanuts.
An examination of the largest food poisoning outbreaks in recent years — in products as varied as spinach, pet food, and a children’s snack, Veggie Booty — show that auditors failed to detect problems at plants whose contaminated products later sickened consumers.
In one case involving hamburgers fed to schoolchildren, the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company in California passed 17 separate audits in 2007, records show. Then an undercover video made that year showed the plant’s workers using forklifts to force sickly cows into the slaughterhouse, which prompted a recall of 143 million pounds of beef in February 2008.
“The contributions of third-party audits to food safety is the same as the contribution of mail-order diploma mills to education,” said Mansour Samadpour, a Seattle consultant who has worked with companies nationwide to improve food safety.
Audits are not required by the government, but food companies are increasingly requiring suppliers to undergo them as a way to ensure safety and minimize liability. The rigor of audits varies widely and many companies choose the cheapest ones, which cost as little as $1,000, in contrast to the $8,000 the Food and Drug Administration spends to inspect a plant.
Typically, the private auditors inspect only manufacturing plants, not the suppliers that feed ingredients to those facilities. Nor do they commonly test the actual food products for pathogens, even though gleaming production lines can turn out poisoned fare.
As in the Georgia peanut case, auditors are also usually paid by the food plants they inspect, which some experts said could deter them from cracking down. Yet food companies often point to an auditor’s certificate as a seal of approval.
The baking institute, which is based in Manhattan, Kan., and is also known as AIB International, says it inspected more than 10,000 food production sites in 80 countries last year. James R. Munyon, its president and chief executive, said his group’s inspections were reliable and tough, no matter who pays for them, but he declined to elaborate on specific audits.
Kellogg officials declined to be interviewed for this article. The company has said it is reviewing its use of private audits, including those by the American Institute of Baking. Kellogg said it required the Peanut Corporation to provide it with annual audits of the Georgia facility. Kellogg has recalled more than a dozen products, including Keebler crackers and Famous Amos cookies.
The retail giant Costco, which had already limited the institute’s audits to bakery vendors, has now told suppliers to stop using the group altogether.
Both the food industry and federal officials say they are aware of the problems with third-party audits. Nonetheless, the F.D.A. has proposed expanding the role of private auditors to inspect the more than 200,000 foreign facilities that ship food to the United States. The agency has proposed a voluntary certification program that would toughen audit standards and alert federal authorities of problems — an idea that has met stiff resistance from the food industry.
Food safety advocates say that audits can play a useful role in improving sanitation and catching problems. But in case after case, the audits have failed to prevent major outbreaks.
In 2007, Keystone Foods, the Pennsylvania plant that makes Veggie Booty, received an “excellent” rating from the American Institute of Baking. But the audit did not extend to ingredient suppliers, including a New Jersey company whose imported spices from China were tainted with salmonella.
As many as 2,000 people in 19 states were sickened, according to federal estimates. The incident prompted the New York company that sells the snack, Robert’s American Gourmet, to add its own inspections and regularly test ingredients for contamination.
Even when audits do turn up problems, it is up to the discretion of food companies to fix them.
After Nebraska Beef was linked to an E. coli outbreak in 2006, officials from the United States Department of Agriculture found that the company had not carried out the recommendations of auditors who had identified numerous problems at the plant in the preceding months.
Nebraska Beef has disputed its culpability in the outbreak, which sickened at least 17 people. A company spokesman said Thursday that the problems identified in the audit had been corrected but could not provide documents to verify that claim.
Robert A. LaBudde, a food safety expert who has consulted with food companies for 30 years, said, “The only thing that matters is productivity.” He added that “you only get in trouble if someone in the media traces it back to you, and that’s rare, like a meteor strike.”
Dr. LaBudde said a sausage plant hired him five years ago to determine the species of bacillus plaguing its meat. But the owner then refused to complete the testing. “I called them ‘anthrax sausages,’ and said they could be killing older people in the state, and still they wouldn’t do it,” he said, declining to name the company.
There are more than 200 companies and numerous independent operators in private food inspection. Few have grown faster than the American Institute of Baking. In addition to the peanut factories, the organization’s 120 auditors handle clients who process meat, seafood, vegetables, spices, oils and dairy products.
The baking institute also sells educational services to food industry personnel; the Peanut Corporation of America said some of its employees attended the organization’s food safety training classes. Audits provide nearly half the income for the organization, according to tax filings and the organization’s Web site.
Mr. Munyon, the organization’s president, said its auditors were drawn from industry experts with vast experience in food safety. “AIB emphasizes the educational value of its inspection procedure to the management and employees of the facilities it provides services to,” he said.
Mr. Munyon acknowledged that auditors were allowed to solicit contracts from plants that they then audited, but said this posed no ethical issues because the auditors were on salary, not paid by commission. Mr. Hatfield first audited the Peanut Corporation plant in Georgia in 2007 after contacting the plant’s managers to solicit their business.
The American Institute of Baking’s dual role as an educator and inspector troubles some in the food industry, as does its expansion beyond baking audits. Before the salmonella outbreak, Costco had rebuffed repeated proposals by the organization to inspect all its food suppliers.
“The American Institute of Baking is bakery experts,” said R. Craig Wilson, the top food safety official at Costco. “But you stick them in a peanut butter plant or in a beef plant, they are stuffed.”
Costco, Kraft Foods and Darden Restaurants are among a group of food manufacturers and other companies that use detailed plans to prevent food safety hazards. They also supplement third-party audits with their own inspections and testing of ingredients and plant surfaces for microbes.
The American Institute of Baking was not alone in missing the trouble at the Peanut Corporation plant in Blakely, Ga. State inspectors also found only minor problems, while a federal team last month uncovered a number of alarming signs, as well as testing records from the company itself that showed salmonella in its products as far back as June 2007. Federal health officials say there are now 677 officially reported cases of salmonella poisoning in the outbreak, which reflects only about 3 percent of the total number of people sickened.
But the baking institute’s private audit of the peanut plant had particular heft in assuring food makers that the processed peanuts were safe. Plant workers, in interviews with The Times, also cited the audits’ findings when asked why they did not pursue their own concerns about the plant.
Another audit of the peanut plant, by the Michigan-based NSF Cook & Thurber, raises further questions about the usefulness of private audits. That audit found nearly two dozen problems that it characterized as “minor,” but it nonetheless gave the peanut plant an overall score of 91 out of 100.
NSF officials said that for their audits, this was a low score. But the company that paid for the audit, the insurance giant American International Group, then sold the peanut company insurance to cover the costs of recalling products, according to lawyers for the Peanut Corporation.
Mr. Hatfield, who audited the peanut plant for the American Institute of Baking, referred questions to the organization, which said he “is degreed in biology” and “trained to do the job.” In auditing the Blakely plant last March, Mr. Hatfield became concerned about his ability to check the plant thoroughly and asked for more than the one day allotted, according to people familiar with the audit. The Peanut Corporation agreed to pay for the additional time, but only in future audits, according to those people.
Mr. Hatfield checked to see that the plant had a system in place to test its products for contamination, but the audit indicated that he did not ask to see any test results for salmonella and therefore did not know that the plant had found the bacteria.
“I never thought that this bacteria would survive in the peanut butter type environment,” Mr. Hatfield wrote to a food safety expert on Jan. 20, after the deadly salmonella outbreak was made public, according to a copy of his e-mail message. “What the heck is going on??”
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
All Natural does NOT always mean Safe....
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Trader Joe’s Expands Its Voluntary Recall To Include Trader Joe’s Sliced Green Apples With All Natural Peanut Butter
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- (January 23, 2009) Monrovia, CA - Trader Joe’s today expands its voluntary recall to include Trader Joe’s Sliced Green Apples With All Natural Peanut Butter, 7-ounce (UPC 92459) because the product contains peanut butter that was manufactured by Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), which is the focus of an ongoing Salmonella investigation.
Yesterday as part of the ongoing PCA investigation, as a precaution Trader Joe’s voluntarily recalled three private label items including: Peanut Butter Chewy Coated & Drizzled Granola Bars, 7.4-ounce (UPC 88713), Nutty Chocolate Chewy Coated & Drizzled Granola Bars 7.4-ounce (UPC 88721) and Sutter’s Formula Cookies, 16-ounce (UPC 00176)
Salmonella is an organism that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail and elderly people and others with weakened immune systems. Healthy persons infected with Salmonella often experience fever, diarrhea (which may be bloody), nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. In rare circumstances, infection with Salmonella can result in the organism getting into the bloodstream and producing more severe illnesses such as arterial infections (i.e., infected aneurysms), endocarditis and arthritis. For more information on salmonella, please visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention web-site at www.cdc.gov.
As a precaution, in advance of this recall, Trader Joe’s removed all four items from store shelves. Both Chewy Coated & Drizzled Granola Bars were supplied by Lovin Oven, LLC and the Sutter’s Formula Cookies were produced by WendySue & Tobey's Bakery.
The Sliced Green Apples With All Natural Peanut Butter, Peanut Butter Chewy Coated & Drizzled Granola Bars and Nutty Chocolate Chewy Coated & Drizzled Granola Bars were sold at Trader Joe’s stores nationwide.
The affected Sutter’s Formula Cookies were sold only in Trader Joe’s stores located in Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada.
At this time, there have been no confirmed cases of illnesses or adverse affects affiliated with these products.
At Trader Joe’s we take the safety of our customers and the integrity of our products very seriously. Customers who have purchased any of these items (any date code) are urged to return them to any Trader Joe’s for a full refund. Customers with questions may contact Trader Joe’s Customer Service at (626) 599-3817.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Peanut Butter in Pet Food too BEWARE!!!
|  |  | |  |
PetSmart Voluntarily Recalls Grreat Choice® Dog Biscuits
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- PHOENIX, AZ, January 20, 2009 -- PetSmart is voluntarily recalling seven of its Grreat Choice® Dog Biscuit products that contain peanut paste made by Peanut Corporation of America (PCA). PCA is the focus of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigation into potential salmonella contamination of peanut butter and paste made at its Blakely, Georgia facility.
Although PetSmart is not aware of any reported cases of illness related to these products, it has removed these products from its store shelves and website and is conducting the recall as a precautionary measure.
The recalled products include only the following types of Grreat Choice Dog Biscuits sold between Aug. 21, 2008 and Jan. 19, 2009:
- Small Assorted 32 oz., UPC 73725702900
- Small/Medium Assorted 4 lb., UPC 73725700601
- Small/Medium Assorted 8 lb., UPC 73725700605
- Small/Medium Assorted 10 lb., UPC 73725702755
- Large Assorted 8 lb., UPC 73725700638
- Extra Large Assorted 8 lb., UPC 73725700779
- Peanut Butter 4 lb., UPC 73725700766
Customers who purchased the recalled dog biscuit products should discontinue use immediately and can return the product to any PetSmart store for a complete refund or exchange. Customers can visit www.petsmartfacts.com for more information or contact PetSmart Customer Service at 1-888-839-9638.
No other products or flavors are included in this recall.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Government has advised consumers to avoid eating cookies, cakes, ice cream and other foods containing peanut butter
Kellogg says FDA confirms salmonella in crackers:
BATTLE CREEK, Mich. – Kellogg Co. said Monday federal authorities have confirmed that salmonella was found in a single package of its peanut butter crackers, as a Midwestern grocer recalled some of its products because of the scare.
Kellogg had reca
lled 16 products last week because of the possibility of salmonella contamination.
On Monday, the company based in Battle Creek said that contamination was confirmed by the Food and Drug Administration in a single package of Austin Quality Foods Toasty Crackers with Peanut Butter.
Food companies and retailers have been recalling products with peanut butter in them because of suspicion of contamination amid a salmonella outbreak that has killed at least six people and sickened more than 470 others in 43 states. At least 90 people have been hospitalized.
Also Monday, Midwestern grocer and retailer Meijer Inc. said it was recalling two types of crackers and two varieties of ice cream because of the possibility of salmonella contamination: Meijer brand Cheese and Peanut Butter and Toasty Peanut Butter sandwich crackers, and Peanut Butter and Jelly and Peanut Butter Cup ice cream.
It was not immediately clear how many packages of Kellogg crackers had been tested, if more tests were being made on other products or if some had already been found not have salmonella, Kellogg spokeswoman Kris Charles said.
The government on Saturday had advised consumers to avoid eating cookies, cakes, ice cream and other foods containing peanut butter until health officials learn more about the contamination.
Officials have been focusing on peanut paste and peanut butter made at Peanut Corp. of America's plant in Blakely, Ga.
On Sunday, Peanut Corp. expanded its own recall to all peanut butter and peanut paste produced at the Blakely plant since July 1.
The company's peanut butter is not sold directly to consumers but it is distributed to institutions and food companies. The peanut paste, made from roasted peanuts, is an ingredient in cookies, cakes and other products sold to consumers.
Meijer, based in Grand Rapids, said in a news release Monday it was issuing its recall because makers of its products had announced possible contamination. The products are sold in Meijer stores and gas stations in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky.
The recall last week by Kellogg, the world's largest cereal maker, affected products including Keebler Soft Batch Homestyle Peanut Butter Cookies, Famous Amos Peanut Butter Cookies and Keebler Cheese & Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers. Charles said the recall affected 7 million cases of its products.
Kellogg Chief Executive David Mackay said the company would evaluate its processes "to ensure we take necessary actions to reassure consumers and rebuild confidence in these products."
Salmonella, a bacteria, is the most common cause of food poisoning in the U.S., causing diarrhea, cramping and fever.
BATTLE CREEK, Mich. – Kellogg Co. said Monday federal authorities have confirmed that salmonella was found in a single package of its peanut butter crackers, as a Midwestern grocer recalled some of its products because of the scare.
Kellogg had reca
lled 16 products last week because of the possibility of salmonella contamination.On Monday, the company based in Battle Creek said that contamination was confirmed by the Food and Drug Administration in a single package of Austin Quality Foods Toasty Crackers with Peanut Butter.
Food companies and retailers have been recalling products with peanut butter in them because of suspicion of contamination amid a salmonella outbreak that has killed at least six people and sickened more than 470 others in 43 states. At least 90 people have been hospitalized.
Also Monday, Midwestern grocer and retailer Meijer Inc. said it was recalling two types of crackers and two varieties of ice cream because of the possibility of salmonella contamination: Meijer brand Cheese and Peanut Butter and Toasty Peanut Butter sandwich crackers, and Peanut Butter and Jelly and Peanut Butter Cup ice cream.
It was not immediately clear how many packages of Kellogg crackers had been tested, if more tests were being made on other products or if some had already been found not have salmonella, Kellogg spokeswoman Kris Charles said.
The government on Saturday had advised consumers to avoid eating cookies, cakes, ice cream and other foods containing peanut butter until health officials learn more about the contamination.
Officials have been focusing on peanut paste and peanut butter made at Peanut Corp. of America's plant in Blakely, Ga.
On Sunday, Peanut Corp. expanded its own recall to all peanut butter and peanut paste produced at the Blakely plant since July 1.
The company's peanut butter is not sold directly to consumers but it is distributed to institutions and food companies. The peanut paste, made from roasted peanuts, is an ingredient in cookies, cakes and other products sold to consumers.
Meijer, based in Grand Rapids, said in a news release Monday it was issuing its recall because makers of its products had announced possible contamination. The products are sold in Meijer stores and gas stations in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky.
The recall last week by Kellogg, the world's largest cereal maker, affected products including Keebler Soft Batch Homestyle Peanut Butter Cookies, Famous Amos Peanut Butter Cookies and Keebler Cheese & Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers. Charles said the recall affected 7 million cases of its products.
Kellogg Chief Executive David Mackay said the company would evaluate its processes "to ensure we take necessary actions to reassure consumers and rebuild confidence in these products."
Salmonella, a bacteria, is the most common cause of food poisoning in the U.S., causing diarrhea, cramping and fever.
Friday, January 16, 2009
453 Illnesses, 5 Deaths Tied To Peanut Butter
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| Five deaths linked to most salmonella outbreak | |||
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Five deaths have now been linked to an outbreak of Salmonella food poisoning linked to peanut butter, but the strain involved is not particularly virulent, U.S. health officials said on Friday. Later, the company at the center of the case, Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), said it had been informed by the Food and Drug Administration that some samples of its products had tested positive for Salmonella. The company also expanded its recall and immediately ceased all production at the suspect facility. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 453 infections had been reported in 43 states and said more cases could be expected. One case was reported in Canada. "Of these 22 percent are hospitalized and five deaths have been reported that may be associated," said the CDC's Dr. Robert Tauxe. He said this was an average rate for Salmonella. Tauxe and other officials confirmed the outbreak could be linked to peanut butter and peanut paste from Peanut Corporation of America, which has voluntarily recalled peanut butter produced in its Blakely, Georgia, processing facility. On Friday night, PCA President Stewart Parnell said in a statement: "Today, the FDA informed PCA that new product samples in unopened containers tested positive for Salmonella." As a result, PCA expanded its recall to cover all peanut butter made on or after August 8, 2008, and peanut paste produced on or after September 26, 2008, at the Blakely plant. The recalled peanut butter was sold in bulk packaging in containers ranging in size from five to 1,700 pounds and the peanut paste was sold in sizes ranging from 35 pound containers to tanker containers. None of the peanut butter or peanut paste being recalled is sold through retail stores, PCA said. The company has stressed that only institutional peanut butter was involved, not name-brand consumer products, but Kellogg Co said on Wednesday it had put a precautionary hold on Austin and Keebler branded peanut butter snacks. "Peanut butter is used as an ingredient in many different foods, which makes this investigation complicated," Tauxe told reporters in a telephone briefing. "In fact this appears to be an ingredient-driven outbreak." The CDC, state health officials and the FDA are interviewing patients to see if they can remember eating any particular foods. The officials said about two-thirds of patients remembered having eaten peanut butter, but noted that some foods contain peanut products that may not be obvious. "We urged companies to check (their records) ... and tell us if the peanuts came from PCA," the FDA's Stephen Sundlof said. Tauxe said Salmonella Typhimurium is a common strain, accounting for about 20 percent of the 40,000 Salmonella cases reported in the United States every year. "Peanut butter is not a food that supports the growth of bacteria in general," Tauxe said. This is why it can be stored unrefrigerated. "Salmonella and other bacteria, if they are introduced into peanut butter ... they are not in any way destroyed," Tauxe said. "They don't continue to grow in the peanut butter but they similarly are not killed in the peanut butter. So they sit there in a dormant state." An outbreak of salmonella was linked to Peter Pan brand peanut butter in 2007. ConAgra Foods Inc closed a Georgia plant after more than 300 people became ill. Salmonella can cause abdominal cramping, diarrhea and fever and it can kill the very young and the very old. (Reporting by Maggie Fox; additional reporting by Steve James; Editing by Julie Steenhuysen) |
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