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More Signs of Salmonella at PCA's Texas Plant

By PritzkerLaw

A Food and Drug Administration spokesman says there are additional indications that peanut products containing Salmonella also came from the Plainview, Texas, plant of Peanut Corporation of America (PCA)

Until recently, the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believed the sole source of the nationwide Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak was PCA's plant in Blakely, Georgia, which has been shut down for more than a month.

But Sebastian Ciarci of the FDA told the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) Tuesday that the agency conducted tests that found the outbreak strain of Salmonella in an opened jar of peanut butter that a Salmonella patient had purchased from Vitamin Cottage Natural Foods in Colorado.

Late last week, the Colorado Department of Health and Environment announced that three people infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella had purchased peanut butter from the natural foods store chain. The peanut butter was store-made in special machines, but the peanuts came from PCA's Texas plant. The chain recalled the fresh ground peanut butter and switched to a new peanut supplier.

Kemper Isely, co-president of Vitamin Cottage, told CIDRAP, that the FDA obtained a positive Salmonella result from one of two samples of the chain's peanut butter. He said FDA inspectors swabbed the Vitamin Cottage machines that made the peanut butter and did not find Salmonella.

Ciarci and Isely both said that because the positive sample came from a container already opened, no one can exclude the possibility that it contained peanuts that were contaminated after they left the Texas plant.

Texas health inspectors last week found dead rodents, rodent feces and feathers in a crawl space at the Texas plant. The facility's air-handling system drew air from the crawl space to a peanut production area.

The plant was shut down and Texas authorities ordered a recall of any product ever produced at the facility. 

PCA subsequently filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and announced that it is liquidating. But that action hasn't stopped a federal criminal probe of the Virginia-based company, nor has it halted a wrongful death lawsuit filed by national food safety law firm PritzkerOlsen Attorneys against PCA and King Nut Companies, a distributor.

The firm represents the families of three of nine individuals whose deaths have been associated with the Salmonella outbreak. We are representing Salmonella victims nationwide. To contact our firm, please call 1-888-377-8900 (toll free) or submit our free Salmonella consultation form.

Full post as published by Food Poisoning Law Blog on February 17, 2009 (boomark / email).