Cincinnati Attorney Alerts Beware of Peanut Butter

The American Association For Justice reported on the following



In a story that appears on its front page, the Washington Post (1/28, A1, Layton) reports, "The Georgia peanut plant linked to a salmonella outbreak that has killed eight people and sickened 500 more across the country knowingly shipped out contaminated peanut butter 12 times in the past two years, federal officials said yesterday." FDA officials and "the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which have been investigating the outbreak of salmonella illness, said yesterday that Peanut Corporation of America found salmonella in internal tests a dozen times in 2007 and 2008 but sold the products anyway, sometimes after getting a negative finding from a different laboratory."

The AP (1/28, Alonso-Zaldivar) reports, "The Georgia peanut processing plant that's the epicenter of a national salmonella outbreak had a history of problems it failed to correct, federal health officials said Tuesday." Dr. Robert Tauxe of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, "There is certainly a salmonella problem in the plant."

ABC World News (1/27, story 4, 0:25, Gibson) reported, "Internal records at a Peanut Corporation of America plant in Georgia show the company's own inspectors found a dozen instances of some type of salmonella in their plant over the past two years.

Peanut butter not considered serious risk for salmonella, inspections may have had gaps. The AP (1/28, Brumback) reports, "Food regulators didn't consider salmonella a threat to most peanut products before they traced an outbreak to a peanut butter plant in Georgia two years ago" and "officials in the nation's top peanut-producing state promptly began checking for the bacteria during routine inspections, and everything went fine for about a year." However, "this month, investigators zeroed in on another Georgia plant while probing a second bout of salmonella that began in the fall and has sickened some 500 people in 43 states, and may have contributed to at least eight deaths."

Food testing process described as complex, expensive, and time-consuming. An AP (1/28) report running over 1,000 words looks at the challenges faced by food inspectors, finding a "costly and time-consuming...inspection process...that already suffers from a lack of manpower and transparency, and from uncertainty over how much testing is enough." There is currently "no federal law that mandates the number of inspections that must be carried out each year at peanut processing facilities." The FDA "contracts with states to perform inspections but allows them broad discretion when it comes to how they do them," only asking the states "to base the frequency and nature of inspections on how risky a food is considered, giving priority to high-risk foods." The whole process is "costly," said Mike Doyle of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety, adding, "Companies have to be practical about it, as well as making sure they are providing the best possible protection for the consumer."

Family sues for wrongful death over salmonella poisoning. The AP (1/28, Fredrix) reports, "The relatives of a 72-year-old woman whose death may be linked to the widespread peanut butter salmonella outbreak have sued the operators of a Georgia peanut butter plant and an Ohio distributor saying their negligence caused her death." The lawsuit alleges that "her death was a direct result of eating peanut putter infected by a salmonella strain linked to the nationwide outbreak."

Anthony Castelli Cincinnat, Ohio Accident and Injury Lawyer

www.castellilaw