Consumer Law

Peanut Butter, Lawsuits and the Nutty FDA

By Joe Consumer

?We are inaugurating a President who campaigned on a platform of change, hope, and justice. I sincerely hope that Mr. Obama will be able to effect change in our food safety agencies and policies. In the meantime, hundreds of Americans are ill, and six families are mourning. All of those families have medical bills, some have lost time at work, and we all know what a strain that is. Something has to be done about it.?

That?s a quote from Bill Marler, the attorney representing victims of the recent peanut butter salmonella outbreak, which has already killed six and made ill close to 500 others in 43 states.  The first lawsuit has been filed in federal court in Georgia against Peanut Corporation of America by Vermont parents whose 7-year-old son became violently ill after eating peanut butter crackers, and who tested positive for salmonella now linked to peanut butter.

A blogger at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer put it this way: ?Marler, the guru of the nation's food safety investigators, is spitting mad about the way the Food and Drug Administration failed to take any definitive action when the first case of peanut-butter spawned salmonella surfaced in Minnesota in September.  ?What in the hell are they thinking?? Marler told me today. ?The FDA knew there was a problem on Labor Day and they wait for inaugural day to do anything.?"

Ok feds, it's time to wake-up now.  It's been an eight-year long nap!

Full post as published by ThePopTort on January 21, 2009 (boomark / email).