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Peanut butter salmonella just latest in string of U.S. food safety worries

By TIM THORNBERRY
Kentucky Correspondent

FRANKFORT, Ky. — The nationwide salmonella outbreak related to peanut butter has hit close to home, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time for at least one state.

As Kentucky struggled to recover from a major ice storm, it was discovered that emergency meal kits sent by FEMA to the state were recalled two weeks earlier due to suspected contaminated peanut butter. A breakdown in communications is being blamed for the kits that made their way here with the intention of feeding some of the thousands left without power.

The peanut butter placed in the kits is just one of many products being affected by a massive recall. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the source of the outbreak comes from peanut butter and peanut paste produced by the Peanut Corp. of America (PCA) at its Blakely, Ga., processing plant.

While the company has issued a recall, hundreds of products made by other companies have been affected, including the Kellogg Co., which put a hold on Austin and Keebler brands Toasted Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers, Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Crackers, Cheese and Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers and Peanut Butter-Chocolate Sandwich Crackers.

Though Kellogg has not encountered any problems with those products, the hold is a precautionary measure. “Consumer health and safety is our top priority,” said David Mackay, president and CEO of Kellogg. “We are taking these voluntary actions out of an abundance of caution.”

Grocery chains such as Kroger have run full-page ads in newspapers reminding the public their brand name peanut butter is safe and did not come from the PCA facility.

As of Jan. 28, the CDC reported “at least 431 peanut butter-containing products had been recalled by 54 companies that had used ingredients produced by the PCA facility after July 1, 2008.” It also reported that the first case of this particular strain dates back to September 2008, with the last confirmed case coming on Jan. 16. As of last Friday, the CDC had confirmed 575 cases in 43 states.

Adding insult to injury, the FDA reports a criminal investigation has been launched against PCA determining “that certain information provided by PCA management during the inspection was not consistent with the subsequent analysis of the company’s records.”
The agency also noted that PCA “had shipped products after having received a positive salmonella test for the lot, followed by a negative salmonella test for the lot.”

Only one other salmonella outbreak connected to peanut butter has been reported in the United States, in 2006-07. The only other related outbreak took place in 1996 in Australia.

A long list

The current outbreak of salmonella is just one more in the growing list of foods found with some sort of contamination over the past few years, prompting many to question the safety of the U.S. food chain.

Last year the scare came from tomatoes, which kept consumers away and crippled an industry at the height of its summer season. Before that, it was fresh spinach.

These are just the huge recalls that make national news – the FDA posts ongoing updated lists of current and past recalls, which seem to go on and on, and aren’t just about human food. Everything from diet pills to dog food have been affected lately.

The CDC reports that the food supply in the U.S. is one of the safest in the world, but the agency estimates that each year 76 million cases of foodborne illnesses occur, more than 300,000 people are hospitalized and 5,000 die.

Information from the CDC website states: “Foodborne diseases are largely preventable, though there is no simple one-step prevention measure like a vaccine. Instead, measures are needed to prevent or limit contamination all the way from farm to table. A variety of good agricultural and manufacturing practices can reduce the spread of microbes among animals and prevent the contamination of foods.

“Careful review of the whole food production process can identify the principal hazards and the control points where contamination can be prevented, limited or eliminated. A formal method for evaluating the control of risk in foods is called the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point, or HACCP system.

“This was first developed by NASA to make sure that the food eaten by astronauts was safe. HACCP safety principles are now being applied to an increasing spectrum of foods, including meat, poultry and seafood,” it states.

For more food safety information from the CDC, visit its website at www.cdc.gov/index.htm and for a complete list of peanut butter recalls, go to www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/salmonellatyph.html#recalls

2/11/2009