Personal Injury Law

Spice safety being reexamined

The Washington Post recently reported that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is taking a second look at the safety of spices. Federal regulators recently met with the spice industry to determine methods and practices to make the supply safer. Ideally, the spice industry would take proactive steps to prevent contamination, such as using one of three methods to rid spices of bacteria: irrigation, steam heating, or fumigating with a pesticide. This is a pressing and important food safety issue because the FDA does not have specific guidelines for screening lead in dried products. At the FDA, the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition is the branch of the FDA responsible for ensuring the safety of and accurate labeling of nearly all food products in the United States.

Spicemakers have been in the news in the past over product safety issues. Last year, a man who claimed to have received salmonella poisoning at a buffet restaurant filed a personal injury lawsuit against a spicemaker. In April of last year, a spice recall was instituted after nearly 50 people in multiple states became ill due to spice linked to salmonella. The strain of salmonella was of particular concern because it was both rare and dangerous.

As described above, salmonella-stricken spices caused severe personal injuries last year and the Chicago product liability attorneys at Levin & Perconti are glad that the FDA is reexamining spice safety. Our Illinois product safety attorneys represent victims in matters against corporations or manufacturers who have sold or manufactured unsafe products to consumers ? and ?products? in this sense includes unsafe food.

For more information on reexamining potential spice contamination, click here.

Full post as published by Illinois Injury Lawyer Blog on March 17, 2010 (boomark / email).