Salmonella Warning: Peanut Butter

[wolram]

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre50f7gh-us-salmonella-usa/

 

[hypatia]

I love peanut butter, but so far my brand is not effected. Its been in the news here for several weeks, and most people have not been buying commercial products made with it. Its good to remind folks not to eat those packaged cookies and candies.

 

[Evo]

I ate the peanut butter crackers that they have recalled. Is that why I was sick for a week recently? Some chat regulars might remember my immodium use.

 

[hypatia]

Oh yes, I remember, if you have any more toss them out.

 

[wolram]

I ate the peanut butter crackers that they have recalled. Is that why I was sick for a week recently? Some chat regulars might remember my immodium use.

By the cringe Evo, why did you eat the recalled crackers, did you mean you ate all the one's recalled locally?

 

[Evo]

By the cringe Evo, why did you eat the recalled crackers, did you mean you ate all the one's recalled locally?

I was really busy at work, so instead of getting lunch, I just got a package of peanut butter crackers from the vending machine. I did this 3 times that week. Nausea and diarrhea all week.

 

[wolram]

I was really busy at work, so instead of getting lunch, I just got a package of peanut butter crackers from the vending machine. I did this 3 times that week. Nausea and diarrhea all week.

You should look after yourself better and take a packed lunch, those vending machines are just the biggest rob dogs.

 

[Evo]

You should look after yourself better and take a packed lunch, those vending machines are just the biggest rob dogs.

I was too tired after work to do anything. Then I got sick and was too sick to make lunch, so I bought more crackers. I was wondering why I was sick all week, that could explain it.

 

[mgb_phys]

So how dangerous is Salmonella?
You get these announcements- all peanut butter may be infected, or all eggs may have traces of Salmonella.
Assuming you aren't on chemo or are a boy in a bubble do you care?
How much Salmonella does it really take to make you ill?

I've never had food poisoning beyond the, having to put the extractor fan in the bathroom level - and I can't believe that after this number of years of eating anything left in the fridge and general grad student living, I have never come in contact with it!

 

[wolram]

I think it all comes down to people being to clean these days, they just do not build up reistance to bugs.

 

[Kurdt]

Some people have more delicate digestive systems. Its alright if you have a cast iron stomach but obviously not for the 6 people who have died.

 

[mgb_phys]

but obviously not for the 6 people who have died.

It said 'may be a factor in 6 deaths', that can just mean a 90year old with congestive heart failure who died of pneumonia also had traces of salmonella - sad but not a killer epidemic.

I wasn't so much bragging about a cast iron stomach I was just wondering about the real vs perceived risk.
Any outbreak in a commercial food operation is well publicised and results in a massive recall.
Presumably standards there are much higher than in your kitchen at home, I have never worn a hairnet to make breakfast.
Are there a large number of food poisoning deaths from cooking at home that don't make the news or is there some part of cooking on an industrial scale that makes food poisoning worse.

 

[Evo]

It said 'may be a factor in 6 deaths', that can just mean a 90year old with congestive heart failure who died of pneumonia also had traces of salmonella - sad but not a killer epidemic.

I wasn't so much bragging about a cast iron stomach I was just wondering about the real vs perceived risk.
Any outbreak in a commercial food operation is well publicised and results in a massive recall.
Presumably standards there are much higher than in your kitchen at home, I have never worn a hairnet to make breakfast.
Are there a large number of food poisoning deaths from cooking at home that don't make the news or is there some part of cooking on an industrial scale that makes food poisoning worse.

Well, for me, I was sick, but not "go to the doctor" sick. It was strange that the symptoms would seem to ease and then hit hard over a period of a week. I took off a day and a half due to it, the rest of the time I wish I'd taken off. I polished off a large box of immodium. Ingesting small quantities over several days of something that made me ill makes sense in retrospect. It's probably coincidence, no telling how long ago those crackers were made.

According to this, it sounds like symptoms from salmonella are more of a nuisance than serious for otherwise healthy people.

http://www.cdc.gov/nczved/dfbmd/disease_listing/salmonellosis_gi.html

 

[wolram]

I can only say about where i work, a lot of our stuff uses fresh cream, food poisoning complaints are very few, out of every batch of products a few are sent for lab analysis,
this is just to say the product was okay after leaving our factory.

 

[dlgoff]

I know how it feels Evo. Sorry. I bet it's the last time you eat from that machine again.

 

[arunma]

Eww, I just had some peanut butter M&Ms today. I hope those weren't contaminated.

 

[LennoxLewis]

I thought it was about the Atheists Nightmare, a jar of peanut butter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZFG5PKw504

 

[gravenewworld]

Make your own PB, it's super easy and it tastes better. Buy 1-2 lbs of peanuts w/ or without shells. Shelling them takes a long time, but if you want super fresh PB, get ones w/ shells. Put them into a food processor like a cuisinart and chop them up finely until it becomes a big sticky mass, sort of like a thick ice cream. Add oil slowly in portions, which can be vegetable or peanut oil, and add until you get whatever consistency you desire. Add a pinch of salt. Add as much honey as you want to sweeten it until it pleases your taste. Blend further.

That's it.

 

[Astronuc]

So how dangerous is Salmonella?
You get these announcements- all peanut butter may be infected, or all eggs may have traces of Salmonella.
Assuming you aren't on chemo or are a boy in a bubble do you care?
How much Salmonella does it really take to make you ill?

I've never had food poisoning beyond the, having to put the extractor fan in the bathroom level - and I can't believe that after this number of years of eating anything left in the fridge and general grad student living, I have never come in contact with it!

I have a friend who is fond of saying, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

FDA report finds multiple problems at peanut plant
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090128/ap_on_he_me/med_salmonella_outbreak

WASHINGTON – Roaches, mold, and signs of a leaking roof were among numerous problems federal inspectors uncovered at a Georgia peanut plant implicated in the national salmonella outbreak, the government said Wednesday.

Food and Drug Administration inspectors noted ten separate problem areas in the report, which the agency posted on the Internet.

The report also documented that the plant's owner, Peanut Corp. of America, found salmonella in a dozen internal tests of its products during the past two years. But managers at the plant shipped the peanut butter and peanut paste anyway after getting new tests. The FDA said the company did not initially disclose the first tests to investigators trying to solve the current salmonella outbreak.

Peanut products initially found to be contaminated with salmonella were shipped as recently as last September. Health officials started picking up signals of the outbreak a month later.

. . . .

I've known some people who became pretty ill from salmonella or E. coli contamination.

 

[turbo]

It seems that the peanut processing plant has a bad food-safety record and has repeatedly shipped products that were contaminated. In some instances, it appears that after getting positive results for salmonella they "shopped around" until they got a null result, and then illegally shipped the products.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090128/ts_nm/us_salmonella_usa;_ylt=AizIz5lqLHanZlWk5KVV4Hus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTJjcWZwanZmBGFzc2V0A25tLzIwMDkwMTI4L3VzX3NhbG1vbmVsbGFfdXNhBHBvcwMxOARzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3J5BHNsawN1c3BlYW51dHBsYW4-

Edit: Ooh! Leapfrogged by Astro! Need to update (new posts) before posting.

 

[russ_watters]

That makes this criminal. People are going to go to jail over this and possibly even be tried for murder. It's neglegent homicide. Second degree murder, like firing a gun on New Year's that happens to kill someone. http://criminal.findlaw.com/crimes/a-z/murder_second_degree.html

 

[turbo]

That makes this criminal. People are going to go to jail over this and possibly even be tried for murder. It's neglegent homicide. Second degree murder, like firing a gun on New Year's that happens to kill someone. http://criminal.findlaw.com/crimes/a-z/murder_second_degree.html

China has sentenced people to death for knowingly selling contaminated/adulterated food. In the US, CEO's who did the same will probably get time in a country-club "prison". I hope not.

 

[mgb_phys]

CEO's who did the same will probably get time in a country-club "prison".

I doubt it, they might prosecute some lab tech whose job it was to test batches - but no CEO is going to be dumb enough to send a memo giving these instructions.

 

[Astronuc]

AP Exclusive: Bad peanuts found before outbreak
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090130/ap_on_go_ot/med_salmonella_outbreak

WASHINGTON – Weeks before the earliest signs of a national salmonella outbreak that now has been traced to peanuts from a Georgia processing plant, peanuts exported by the same company were found to be contaminated and were returned to the United States, The Associated Press has learned.

The rejected shipment — coming over the U.S. border across a bridge between New York and Canada — was logged by the Food and Drug Administration but never was tested by federal inspectors, according to the government's own records.

The chopped peanuts from Peanut Corp. of America in Blakely, Ga., were prevented by the FDA from being allowed back into the United States in mid-September because the peanuts contained an unspecified "filthy, putrid or decomposed substance, or is otherwise unfit for food," according to an FDA report of the incident.

It was not immediately clear whether the date on the government's record, Sept. 15, was when the unspecified importer rejected the shipment or when the FDA refused it. It also was not known whether the peanut shipment ultimately was destroyed or sent somewhere else.

. . . .

So I wonder why the FDA did not bother to follow up on this company, which apparently was shipping contaminated food? Did it not occur to them that this company might endanger the lives of the general population? So much for protecting the General Welfare.

 

[edward]

The dirty little secret.

ATLANTA - A federal probe into a deadly salmonella outbreak has exposed a dirty secret: Food producers in most states are not required to alert health regulators if internal tests show possible contamination at their plants.

The legal loophole surfaced this week when federal investigators disclosed internal Peanut Corp. of America reports that documented at least 12 positive tests for salmonella between 2007 and 2008 at their Blakely, Ga., plant, which has been identified as the source of the nationwide outbreak. In each case, the plant did not alert state or federal regulators.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28919975/

This is what a good lobbyist can buy.

Many states allow industry to be self reporting. Companies in Arizona only need to submit a monitoring plan to the state. From there on they are on the honor system.

One industrial company in Tucson, Brush Wellman, processes and machines beryllium for the DOD. A routine check for lead in at a public school located one mile away revealed beryllium in the soil

In this case the company's own monitoring records showed no evidence of emissions of beryllium dust.

 

[Astronuc]

Gov't launches criminal probe in peanut recall
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090130/ap_on_go_ot/salmonella_outbreak

WASHINGTON – The government has opened a criminal investigation into the Georgia peanut-processing plant at the center of the national salmonella outbreak, federal officials said Friday. Stephen Sundlof, head of the Food and Drug Administration's food safety center, said the Justice Department will join FDA investigators in looking into possible criminal violations. The Peanut Corp. of America plant shipped allegedly tainted products to dozens of other food companies.

"It is an open investigation at this time," said Sundlof. "We can't really talk much about the investigation itself."

More than 500 people have been sickened as a result of the outbreak, and at least eight may have died because of salmonella infections. More than 430 products have been pulled off the shelves in a recall that reaches to Canada and Europe.

In another development Friday, officials urged consumers to be cautious about "boutique" brands of peanut butter, which had not previously figured in the recall.

Although national brands of peanut butter are unaffected, some smaller companies may have received peanuts from the processing plant in Blakely, Ga., the FDA said.

. . . .

Pity that action was taken before 500+ people become ill, and some possibly died.

 

[Astronuc]

Firm tied to salmonella ran unlicensed Texas plant
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090203/ap_on_go_ot/salmonella_outbreak

WASHINGTON – A peanut processing plant in Texas run by the same company blamed for a national salmonella outbreak operated for years uninspected and unlicensed by government health officials, The Associated Press has learned. The Peanut Corp. of America plant in Plainview was never inspected until after the company fell under investigation by the Food and Drug Administration, according to Texas health records obtained by AP.

Once inspectors learned about the Texas plant, they found no sign of salmonella there. But new details about that plant — including how it could have operated unlicensed for nearly four years — raised questions about the adequacy of government efforts to keep the nation's food supply safe. Texas is among states where the FDA relies on state inspectors to oversee food safety.

The problem is "not a completely uncommon occurrence," said Cornell University food science professor Joseph Hotchkiss.

The salmonella outbreak was traced to the company's sister plant in Blakely, Ga., where inspectors found roaches, mold, a leaking roof and internal records of more than a dozen positive tests for salmonella.

The outbreak so far has resulted in more than 500 reported illnesses, led to an expansive recall and caused as many as eight deaths. The government is working on a criminal investigation in the case.

In Texas, inspector Patrick Moore of the Department of State Health Services was sent to Plainview, in the sparsely populated Texas Panhandle, after salmonella was traced to the company's plant in Georgia. Moore said the Texas plant wasn't licensed with health officials and had never been inspected since it opened in March 2005. Texas requires food manufacturers to be licensed every two years and routinely inspected.

"I was not aware this plant was in operation and did not know (what) type of products processed," Moore wrote in an inspection report obtained by AP.

The plant is registered with the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts to do business as Plainview Peanut Co. LLC, according to state records. But the company "was unable to present evidence at the time of the inspection of a current food manufacturers license," Moore wrote in his report.

The plant was properly registered with the FDA as a food processing plant, said David Glasgow, director of the agency's investigations branch in Dallas.

Margaret Glavin, a retired senior FDA official, said those registrations don't help much. She said food producers are required to register under the Bioterrorism Act of 2002, but there is no reliable database that is regularly updated to aid food inspectors. Some companies are listed multiple times, and others remain on the government's list even after they go out of business.

"The database is terrible," said Glavin, who recently stepped down as associate commissioner for FDA's regulator affairs.

. . . .

So much for upholding the law.

A local child was found to have salmonella traced back to the Ga plant. He ate peanut butter crackers at school.

 

[wolram]

This is all very strange, were i work every new customer (large retail chain) doe's an inspection of the factory, often taking two or three days, they go through paper work, inspect plant and procedures, often times each new customer brings up a few things they are not happy with, they all all have to be addressed before they will do business with us, that is just the start, we expect follow up vists, have people just been buying from this place (blind) if they have then they are responsible too.

 

[Astronuc]

Peanut Co. owner urged shipping tainted products
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090211/ap_on_bi_ge/salmonella_outbreak

WASHINGTON – The owner of a peanut company urged his workers to ship tainted products after receiving test results identifying salmonella, according to internal company e-mails disclosed Wednesday by a House committee.

The company e-mails obtained by the House panel showed that Peanut Corp. of America owner Stewart Parnell ordered the shipments tainted with the bacteria because he was worried about lost sales.

Parnell was ordered by subpoena to appear before Congress on Wednesday to discuss the outbreak that has led to 600 illnesses, eight deaths and one of the largest recalls in history, more than 1,800 products pulled. His Georgia plant is blamed for the outbreak.

Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., revealed the internal correspondence from the company during a House Energy and Commerce hearing.

In prepared testimony, a laboratory owner told the House panel that the peanut company's disregard for tests identifying salmonella in its product is "virtually unheard of" in the nation's food industry and should prompt efforts to increase federal oversight of product safety.

Charles Deibel, president of Deibel Laboratories Inc., said his company was among those that tested Peanut Corp. of America's products and notified the Georgia plant that salmonella was found in some of its peanut stock. Peanut Corp. sold the products anyway, according to a Food and Drug Administration inspection report.

"It is not unusual for Deibel Labs or other food testing laboratories to find that samples clients submit do test positive for salmonella and other pathogens, nor is it unusual that clients request that samples be retested," Deibel said in prepared testimony to a House subcommittee. "What is virtually unheard of is for an entity to disregard those results and place potentially contaminated products into the stream of commerce."

. . . .

 

[turbo]

I doubt it, they might prosecute some lab tech whose job it was to test batches - but no CEO is going to be dumb enough to send a memo giving these instructions.

This one was. See previous post.

He needs to see serious prison time in a real prison, along with underlings who committed these clearly illegal acts. He gave the orders, but he didn't do all the damage alone.

 

[turbo]

The owner and the plant manager both refused to testify to Congress today. This news article gives more detail regarding the content of their internal emails than has previously been disclosed. Clearly, their actions were criminal.

The House panel released e-mails obtained by its investigators showing Parnell ordered products identified with salmonella shipped and quoting his complaints that tests discovering the contaminated food were "costing us huge $$$$$$."
At one point, Parnell said his workers "desperately at least need to turn the raw peanuts on our floor into money." In another exchange, he told his plant manager to "turn them loose" after products once deemed contaminated were cleared in a second test.
Parnell's response to a final lab test showing salmonella was about how much it would cost, and the impact lab testing was having on moving his products.
"We need to discuss this," he wrote in an Oct. 6 e-mail to Sammy Lightsey, his plant manager. "The time lapse, beside the cost is costing us huge $$$$$$ and causing obviously a huge lapse in time from the time we pick up peanuts until the time we can invoice."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090211/ap_on_go_co/salmonella_outbreak;_ylt=AmBGh7A95VEvW062Li7wAg.s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFoOW9uOXBsBHBvcwMxNgRzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNwZWFudXRjb21wYW4-

 

[Astronuc]

Peanut Corp. of America files for bankruptcy
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090213/ap_on_bi_ge/salmonella_outbreak_bankruptcy

ATLANTA – The peanut processing company at the heart of a national salmonella outbreak has filed for bankruptcy.

The Virginia-based Peanut Corp. of America filed Friday for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in bankruptcy court in Lynchburg, Va. The company's attorney, Andrew Goldstein, says the filing was "regrettable" but inevitable.

The company said in the filing that its debt and assets both ranged between $1 million and $10 million.

The salmonella outbreak was traced to one of the company's plants in Blakely, Ga., where inspectors found roaches, mold and a leaking roof. A second plant in Texas was shuttered this week. The outbreak has resulted in more than 500 illnesses, led to one of the nation's biggest recalls and may have caused as many as nine deaths.

. . . .

I guess they can't afford to keep the place clean.

 

[turbo]

The Texas plant had dead rodents, rodent excrement, and bird feathers in a filthy crawl space, and the plant's ventilation system was pulling air out of that space and exhausting it into the production area. Way to go, guys!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/12/peanut.butter.recall/