Thought the peanut scare was over? 15 new items added to the list just last week
Filed under: Food, Recalls, Shopping, Health, Consumer Complaints, Buyer Beware
More than two months after America was first being deluged with news that salmonella-tainted peanut products were scattered throughout the nation's food supply, the list of potentially dangerous products is still growing. At least 15 more products were added to the list in the past week and at least 70 so far in March, bringing the total to about 3,500. After Peanut Corp. of America filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 7 (liquidation of assets), the company ceased communicating with its customers -- forcing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and state authorities to try to figure out where PCA-produced products had gone. And it's not going smoothly.
So far, authorities have connected the products to nine deaths and nearly 700 people who fell ill. So the delay in finding products is dangerous at best and deadly at worst. You can search the list of recalled products here. If you have any of the products that have been recalled, you are urged to throw them away immediately.
Here's one complication to the notifications: The products became the ingredients used to make the ingredients used in the food-making process. So the path between the peanut products and where they ended up is not a straight line.
"This is a very active and dynamic situation," FDA spokeswoman Stephanie Kwisnek said. "Since the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) initial recall in early January, the recall has expanded on multiple occasions... In addition, the recall is very expansive and complex because firms that received product from PCA may have distributed the product to other firms who may have distributed the product further and/or may have incorporated the recalled product as an ingredient into products that were distributed through various channels and consumed in various settings."
Ingredients made at contaminated PCA plants in Georgia and Texas -- at which managers were accused of knowingly distributing tainted peanut products -- ended up in a wide variety of products from snack bars to cereal to ice cream to dog treats. None of the national brands of jarred peanut butter have been linked to this recall, however.
The FDA said it has contacted more than 17,000 businesses. So far, more than 300 companies have had to recall their products in 18 food categories making this one of the largest food recalls in U.S. history.
To further show the potential breadth of such failures as what happened at Peanut Corporation, the FDA has had to notify officials in more than 50 countries that some of the tainted products might have been exported to them.
The extent of the problem demonstrates how much damage one out of control company could cause. Most companies that did business with PCA accepted representations from the firm that all was well at their plants.
But a handful, including Nestle, sent their own inspectors to the plants and stopped doing business with them. Kellogg CEO David Mackay, testifying before Congress, apologized to millions of customers for allowing the tainted ingredients to find their way into the food chain through their products.
The appointment of New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Margaret "Peggy" Hamburg -- a battle-tested public health cop -- gives some hope a broken system can get a needed overhaul. But with obscure companies scattered from coast to coast potentially one step away from similar situations, the challenges are enormous.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-23-2009 @ 6:29PM
clydeomide said...
Another government organization at work. Their usual lame excuse will be they just don't have enough people to police the food industry right. Same thing with Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae. The government bungles everything it does because of gross incompetence. Like Nancy Pelosi telling the big 3 how to build a car. What does she know about building cars? If the FDA was a private company, incompetence would be a lot less. People would get fired for not doing their job. Not with the government, though. Screw up after screw up gets you a bonus. AIG gets away with it because AIG insures the government. And Obama wants to take care of health care? I'll stick with my private insurance.
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3-23-2009 @ 6:59PM
BestLeeha said...
Is that comment a joke? Or have you been living under a rock for the past 8 years? What were Enron, AIG, Worldcom, Bernie Madoff, Tyco, Lehman Bros., etc.? PRIVATE corporate entities who screwed around and robbed not just the consumers of their products but anyone even tangentially related to their industries and the entire global economy blind. No one got fired, and you certainly can't even make the argument that incompetence and unethical behavior weren't to blame in all those cases.
I know nothing about engineering, and frankly I could read a book and tell US automakers how to build a better car. Or I could just lend them any Japanese car--they could take it apart and reverse-engineer it. Innovation is gone in this country, and somehow people think that it's still the 1950s and we can use all the natural resources we want, screw countries over at random, and raid the economies and pockets of anyone we please. Get a clue. Read a book. And tap into reality. Very little of what our country has done is done well, top to bottom. It's about damned time we look at examples of other nations, structures, and models to see what actually works instead of going along with antiquated theories that only work in a perfect world.
3-24-2009 @ 4:22PM
Cynthia said...
Westco Fruit and Nuts Not Cooperating with Peanut Recall: http://www.newsinferno.com/archives/5258#more-5258
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