Personal Injury Law

Was the recent Peanut Butter Salmonella outbreak avoidable?

By Brian F. LaBovick, Esq.

The FDA released new information on the Peanut Butter Plant that shows the company knew about the Salmonella potential, but failed to act on the information. This failure to act could have possibly prevented the deaths of 8 people and the sickness of 500 people with Salmonella. According to a statement from the FDA in the Washington Post, the 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. This is an outrage that a company would ignore important data and findings. I would like to know their excuse or rationale for not taking these reports seriously.

Federal investigators also said yesterday that they had found four strains of salmonella at the Georgia plant, including one in a sample taken from the floor near a washroom. Only the Typhimurium strain of Salmonella enterica has been linked to the outbreak.

"There is a salmonella problem at the plant," said Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the CDC's division of food-borne, bacterial and mycotic diseases.

It is important to note that the Peanut Corporation of America, based in Lynchburg, Va., was not required to inform regulators about its internal salmonella tests, Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said it appears that the company violated federal law. "Foods are supposed to be produced under conditions that do not render them damaging to health," he said.

Only time will tell if there will be any consequences to this company for this mishap that conceivably could have been avoided if they would have acted or informed people sooner.  In the meantime, thousands of people are worried and alarmed at the prospect of getting salmonella from eating one of America's favorite foods "peanut butter".

Full post as published by LaBovick Injury Law Blog on January 28, 2009 (boomark / email).