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Recent Botulism Result of Negligence and Poor Regulation

By Pritzker | Ruohonen

Several recent cases of botulism in the food industry may be a result of poor company management and the Food and Drug Administration’s failure to thoroughly and regularly police plants.

The first outbreak of botulism in over 33 years from a U.S. made canned food product was from canned hot dog chili sauce made by Castleberry Food Company.

According to USA Today, the cookers had such maintenance problems as:

• Broken alarms
• A leaky valve
• An inaccurate temperature device

Also mentioned in the USA Today story, the plant in Georgia showed signs of poor management and failure to address problems within the system.

But according to FDA’s report, the botulism cases within the plant could not solely be attributed to poor management within the plant. According to the USA Today story:

The FDA's report also underscored the limits of government oversight. The FDA criticized Castleberry's for failing to correct problems, but those problems went undetected by FDA inspectors at the plant five months before the outbreak and by Department of Agriculture inspectors who were in the plant weekly.

The botulism outbreak linked to Castleberry Food products prompted heightened FDA inspections. The USA Today story stated that it was this additional attention that alerted the FDA to contamination of canned products at another plant, saying,

In late November, the FDA began inspecting the New Era Canning plant in Michigan, where it discovered botulism spores, a precursor to the toxin, in cans of green and garbanzo beans. No illnesses were reported. New Era recalled 1.2 million cans of vegetables because of the risk.

The botulism found in New Era’s cannery was believed to be a result of a broken well line which allowed contaminated water to leak into cans that were placed in water to cool.

Both Castleberry’s and New Era claim that the botulism that was found in their plants was a result of pure chance, not neglect. According to the article published in USA Today, Christopher Lischewski, CEO of Castleberry stated, "It's a tough-worded report. But I do not believe there was any sloppiness. We believe it was more of a technology and design issue than an operating issue."

Both Castleberry and New Era have made changes to their company practices. Castleberry removed any suspect cookers from their production, while New Era has implemented chlorine in their cooling water and more frequent checks of bacteria in the plant water.

Full post as published by Food Poisoning Law Blog on June 30, 2008 (boomark / email).