Peanut butter salmonella risk spreads to other foods

[SteveGrenard]

Thousands of Americans and consumers overseas of American peanut paste may be at risk of potentially fatal salmonella infection. There have been six deaths already and 453 cases in the U.S. (and one in Canada) It turns out it is not just peanut butter itself but many products containing it which could place people at risk. I apologize if there is another thread on this subject but I couldn't locate it through search.

By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Jan. 17, 2009 -- The ongoing salmonella outbreak linked to six deaths may be associated with peanut-containing products besides peanut butter.

At least 453 people in 43 states and one Canadian province have been sickened by the outbreak strain of Salmonella typhimurium.

The FDA asked food makers nationwide to check whether their peanut-containing products include a recalled peanut paste made by the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) and to recall or hold those products as a precaution.

The peanut paste, which consists of ground, roasted peanuts, was distributed to 85 companies, including food makers and other distributors. It's an ingredient in "many other products, including cookies, crackers, cereal, and ice cream," Stephen Sundlof, DVM, director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said at a news conference.

More at the following url including a list of recalled brands:

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/food-poisoning/news/20090117/salmonella-not-just-peanut-butter

 

[BenBurch]

And to think I had this urge earlier today for peanut butter cookies.

Now I have an unopened packet of them, and can't eat them.

Feh.

We need more food inspection.

 

[tesscaline]

Stories like this make me wonder just what in all heck are food processing companies doing in their factories??

How do you get salmonella in peanut butter in the first place? Did some idiot drop a raw chicken into a vat or something??

 

[meg]

The salmonella you can get from poultry droppings is Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis.

This peanut butter strain of salmonella is Salmonella enterica serovar typhimurium, which comes from reptile and rodent droppings.

 

[SteveGrenard]

I guess the rodent droppings have it.....they love peanuts and peanut butter. reptiles don't but carnivorous ones eat rodents. Presumably the peanuts are first roasted before they're made into paste so the contamination probably occurs at some point after this.

 

[tesscaline]

The salmonella you can get from poultry droppings is Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis.

This peanut butter strain of salmonella is Salmonella enterica serovar typhimurium, which comes from reptile and rodent droppings.

So some idiot dropped rat poop in the vat instead?

It still begs the question "What in all heck are food processing companies doing in their factories??"

 

[SteveGrenard]

Maybe the rats dropped their own poop in the vat when no one was looking....nothing new about rats and peanut butter. In fact they love the stuff. It is used to train them and make them go where wanted in movies such as Ben. Here also is a report from 2007:

Roaches and a Rat found at ConAgra Peanut Butter Plant
May 1, 2007. By Heidi Turner

Sylvester, GA: Lawyers who inspected the ConAgra peanut butter plant that was linked to the recent salmonella outbreak reported finding a dead rat, rattraps and roaches at the plant. The roaches were found on raw peanuts. In addition, the attorneys found bird feathers and other things that are "consistent with salmonella."

The plant was closed on February 14 in the wake of the salmonella outbreak, which led to 425 confirmed cases of the illness. Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter were pulled from the shelves in a massive recall that cost ConAgra between $50 and $60 million.

Meanwhile, more lawsuits have been filed against ConAgra foods. A couple from Kentucky has filed a lawsuit claiming they became ill in early February after eating the contaminated peanut butter. They were both so ill that they wound up in the emergency room where a doctor diagnosed them with food poisoning. Their lawsuit asks ConAgra to pay the couple's medical bills and other punitive damages.

http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/features/peanut-butter-roaches-rats.html

 

[meg]

So some idiot dropped rat poop in the vat instead?

It still begs the question "What in all heck are food processing companies doing in their factories??"

I'm sorry. I just don't get your question. They're grinding up huge vats of peanuts.

Do you think that a big factory that processes thousands of pounds of peanuts every day might not be attractive to rodents?

Is it really inconceivable to you that a factory worker (even though factory workers are undeniably the most observant and consciencious species of humans on the planet) might miss a speck of mouse poo (or even a whole mouse or two?) in a two ton pile of roasted peanuts (perhaps the 18th of 30 that day) moving through the process?

 

[tesscaline]

I'm sorry. I just don't get your question. They're grinding up huge vats of peanuts.

Do you think that a big factory that processes thousands of pounds of peanuts every day might not be attractive to rodents?

Is it really inconceivable to you that a factory worker (even though factory workers are undeniably the most observant and consciencious species of humans on the planet) might miss a speck of mouse poo (or even a whole mouse or two?) in a two ton pile of roasted peanuts (perhaps the 18th of 30 that day) moving through the process?

Of course its attractive to rodents. But, here's the thing -- its is the factory's responsibility (both morally and legally, by the way) to keep those rodents out. And, if things are being run in compliance with established food sanitation standards, it's really not that difficult to do. See, I graduated an accredited food sanitation and safety program. I'm not just some random schmuck who doesn't know a whit about food safety.

You have to be screwing up in a major way to get that kind of contamination in a commercial food product as it takes way more than just one stray mouse dropping to cause enough contamination to make enough people sick enough to require a recall (did I use "enough" enough times? ).

Rat infestations are NOT normal. And if those infestations are bad enough that they've contaminated an entire batch (or more) of food product, that is a really REALLY bad infestation. So... The question still begs -- what exactly are they doing? Willfully ignoring any and every food sanitation law in the book? Storing product open air on the floor in a garage? Seriously.

The thing that really bothers me is that this is not some isolated incident. This month it's peanut butter. Not too long ago it was tomatoes, and scallions (the local taco-bell STILL won't serve them as a result). Before that it was spinach. So it's not just one processor thats messing up. It's a whole bunch of them. And then, the companies buying these ingredients to use in their own products aren't testing them themselves to ensure they're getting the quality/safety they thought they paid for!

I find it not only disturbing, but mind boggling as well.

 

[BenBurch]

Why don't they just irradiate all things like this after packaging? Then nothing live could possibly be going along for a ride.

 

[tesscaline]

Why don't they just irradiate all things like this after packaging? Then nothing live could possibly be going along for a ride.

Because then all the ignorant woo-heads would pitch a fit about how you could get radiation poisoning, or cancer, or grow a second head (which might actually benefit them, come to think of it, because maybe that one might have a fully functioning brain), and get the company boycotted or what have you and sales would plummet?

 

[Miss_Kitt]

BenBurch -- In some cases, they do. But they call it "cold pasteurization" instead of irradiating, because that doesn't set the woos off.

SkeptiChick -- I understand your frustration. But I do think it's inaccurate to mix the cilantro/tomato/spinach problems in with the current problem. The produce appears to have been contaminated by runoff from the neighboring farm(s), rather than a contaminant having been introduced during processing.

I know that weird stuff can definitely happen in food processing: I once bit into a protein bar, and found--like some sick joke--half an earwig baked into the next bite. Needless to say, I spit that mouthful into the sink so fast it made flames in the air! When I contacted the company's 800 customer number, the drone on the other end of the phone read me answers from a script, which did not apply. I just stopped buying the product.

Should I have launched some kind of campaign? Well, I had eaten literally hundreds (and perhaps over a thousand) of bars from this company over a 5-year period, and I had never had an issue until the Day of the Earwig. Because it was intact and cooked in, I concluded that it must have somehow gotten into the clean work area, and fallen into the product between mixing and baking (and before the coating went on). No matter how tight the attempted controls are, those 1 in 100,000 events are going to happen.

I cut up and surveyed the remaining bars in the carton (no way was I going to eat one!) and found no evidence of anything, so I was reassured that there was not likely a large-scale failure of sanitation. Just a critter that rode in on somebody's cuff or boot and managed to crawl far enough to get to the food.

Thinking critically, I doubt that the bug would have harmed me: It was quite dried-out and brittle, and probably cooked at a high enough temp to kill any bacteria it might have carried. Being a human being, though, I found even looking at the wrapper made me faintly queasy for months to follow.

I'm not saying that this peanut butter incident is not grounds for investigation and censure: It is. The wide distribution of contaminated material suggests a major failure to obey industry standards and precautions, on an ongoing basis. In response, the manufacturer is going to be paying a lot of medical bills and possibly some wrongful death claims.

But not all incidents of food contamination fall into that category. As the cilantro problem showed, all the good intentions and use of procedures in the world will not completely protect us from the challenge inherent in food being mass-produced and shipped to consumers. The upside of this distributed market in foodstuffs is that we get all kinds of fruits and veggies all year 'round; the downside is that you have to worry about washing your produce really carefully, and sometimes even that may not be enough.

You're still more likely to get food poisoning at home from not having properly stored something, or not cooking it enough, or failing to wash your hands and work station between foods. (Well, maybe not you personally, SkeptiChick, but the editorial "you".) Most of the time, it will result in an upset stomach or the trots and a day of rest and fluids.

Just my thoughts, Miss Kitt

 

[tesscaline]

Miss Kitt --

I'm not necessarily lumping all food contamination issues into the same bag. But there has been a rather large rash of food contamination issues over the past few years. Between farm runoffs, improper sanitation, issues with weird poisons in imported products (the pet food thing, for example), and whatever else I've managed to overlook, it's hard for someone like myself to just go "oh, well, these things happen."

Maybe for people who haven't been educated on just how dangerous food borne illness can be it's easier to shrug these kinds of things off. Or maybe it's just that some people aren't educated on just how easy these kinds of things can be to avoid, so they act like it's just another part of existence that you have to tolerate. Maybe they never read The Jungle, I don't know.

Yes, I find it frustrating. But it honestly makes me angry that companies think it's okay to ship out products that hundreds of thousands of people are going to eat not just without being sure that they're okay to consume, but KNOWING they're not. Maybe in the case of scallions (and here where I am, the issue was indeed scallions, not cilantro) being tainted by some other farm's runoff you can chalk it up to "oh heck, we didn't know." But rat feces in peanut butter? I'm sorry, but having rats in your factory is one of those things that doesn't go unnoticed. And if you do have rats in your factory, and you keep shipping product anyway, then you are knowingly putting people's lives at risk (yes, it is possible to die from food borne illness), just to make a dollar or two. It's irresponsible, and irresponsibility ticks me off even in mundane non life threatening situations. When its irresponsibility in regards to life threatening issues, I get downright furious (this is a prime reason why I avoid posting in anti-vax threads; I get too heated up over the stupidity of anti-vaxxers for my own good).

Maybe if more people got furious over these kinds of things they'd stop happening.

 

[quarky]

Maybe a terrorist tossed a rat in the vat. Wouldn't be too hard to do.

Food supplies are very vulnerable.

 

[KoihimeNakamura]

This explains why we pulled stuff at work now.

 

[SteveGrenard]

This explains why we pulled stuff at work now.

I presume you work in a food store and have pulled all possible peanut butter containing stuff off the shelves???

Here are two interesting references on rats/rodents and salmonella. The first, out of Poland is full text (go to url) and provides much interesting historical and background information. In addition to salmonella, rats were found to have contained and possibly vector many other nasty nasty micrororganisms. If you don't mind the problems with the English translation in some parts this is definitely worth reviewing:

Rats belong to the most troublesome and detested plagues tormenting people from the beginning of mankind. An estimated number of 10 milliard rats are present in the world. In Poland it is difficult to evaluate their quantity, therefore we can only assume that among 40-million human population there may be 40-million rats population. These are synanthropic animals, i.e. animals that have to live near people providing them both with food and shelter. At present two species of rats dominate in Europe: wild brown and black rat. The oldest records of rat�s presence in Europe date back to the period of early and late Pliocene. The black rat currently prevails in our continent, particularly far into land. The brown rat is most frequently to be encountered in our region in ports, yet also far into land one may come across its larger clusters [36].

http://www.ejpau.media.pl/volume5/issue1/veterinary/art-04.html



The rat is even used as a model to study salmonella including the serotype found in the current incident:

Journal of Applied Microbiology
Volume 81 Issue 6, Pages 651 - 656
Published Online: 11 Mar 2008
The Official Journals of the Society for Applied Microbiology


A rat model of infection by Salmonella typhimurium or Salm. enteritidis

P.J. Naughton 1 , G. Grant 1 , R.J. Spencer 1 , S. Bardocz 1 A. Pusztai 1

1 Division of Nutritional Sciences, Rowett Research Institute, Bucksbum, Aberdeen, UK
Correspondence to: Patrick J. Naughton, Division of Nutritional Sciences, Rowett Research Institute, Greenburn Road, Bucksburn, Aberdeen AB2 9SB, UK (e-mail [email protected]).
Copyright 1996 The Society for Applied Bacteriology


ABSTRACT
Salmonellosis in the rat has many similarities with the disease in humans, with the ileum thought to be the main site of colonization/invasion in both species. Thus, the rat may be a useful way to study the mechanism of infection by these pathogenic bacteria. A series of infection trials carried out with Hooded Lister rats showed that a salmonella infection persisted for an extended period of time and that salmonellae bind to the small intestinal epithelium as early as 4 h after intragastric intubation. Reinfection from the large intestine may not therefore initially play a significant role in the salmonella infection process. The rat model may therefore provide a means to test in vivo interventionist strategies, designed to block binding of the pathogens in the gastrointestinal tract.

 

[Travis]

On the whole mass food production has led to a decrease in food borne ailments. The reason is that while one individual might be much more anal about safety regarding food preparation than a large corporation there are many more who just wouldn't be. I have many friends who would probably kill themselves if they had to cook they're own food all the time thanks to them knowing next to nothing about proper preparation. I had one friend who ate raw bacon one night because he was drunk and didn't want to bother with cooking.

I bring this up because of the reference to The Jungle which is cited by some people as evidence that you can't trust any food produced by big companies.

 

[tesscaline]

On the whole mass food production has led to a decrease in food borne ailments. The reason is that while one individual might be much more anal about safety regarding food preparation than a large corporation there are many more who just wouldn't be. I have many friends who would probably kill themselves if they had to cook they're own food all the time thanks to them knowing next to nothing about proper preparation. I had one friend who ate raw bacon one night because he was drunk and didn't want to bother with cooking.

I agree that on the whole, mass food production has saved lives. I've known people like your friend (although these days, raw bacon isn't nearly the risk that it used to be), and they'd probably have starved to death without McDonald's and the like. However, I don't think that warrants throwing all caution to the wind when dealing with processed food, and I definitely don't think that it means we should be forgiving when a company that we have trusted to feed us abuses that trust.

I bring this up because of the reference to The Jungle which is cited by some people as evidence that you can't trust any food produced by big companies.

That was not my intention, especially since I've worked for big companies that produced food. I view it more as a history lesson, and a precautionary tale that depicts what should be avoided when it comes to food processing (even if that's not what the author intended the story to be). Of the people I know that have read the novel, it has proved to be enlightening to them about what exactly can happen when regulations are not in place, or when what regulations are in place are ignored.

 

[Travis]

I agree that on the whole, mass food production has saved lives. I've known people like your friend (although these days, raw bacon isn't nearly the risk that it used to be), and they'd probably have starved to death without McDonald's and the like. However, I don't think that warrants throwing all caution to the wind when dealing with processed food, and I definitely don't think that it means we should be forgiving when a company that we have trusted to feed us abuses that trust.

You're absolutely right. We do have regulatory agencies for this for a reason and from the sounds of it the peanut butter distributor might have quite a few violations to account for.

That was not my intention, especially since I've worked for big companies that produced food. I view it more as a history lesson, and a precautionary tale that depicts what should be avoided when it comes to food processing (even if that's not what the author intended the story to be). Of the people I know that have read the novel, it has proved to be enlightening to them about what exactly can happen when regulations are not in place, or when what regulations are in place are ignored.

No doubt the book is important and I did not intend to say you were implying the need for the disbandment of mass produced foods I just offered that up in case anyone else might go on that tangent. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[INRM]

Part of me wonders if there's some kind of deliberateness in the FDA doing such a bad job. Maybe the want more inspection capability, even more than necessary (who knows?) and are deliberately letting things slip through the cracks until it reaches a crisis so as to get people to demand more inspection capability, which would then be floated as a solution.

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INRM