Other Kellogg Salmonella Peanut Butter Victims Speak Out - Billie, Shannon and Payton Rector
When Marler Clark clients, Billie Rector went to St. Joseph Hospital in mid-January complaining of nausea and wrenching stomach pain, doctors at first suspected his gallbladder. When his 3-year-old daughter, Payton, was hospitalized a day later because of bloody diarrhea, doctors wondered if both family members might have been infected with E. coli. It turned out that the little girl, at least, was among the 666 people in 44 states to become ill after eating peanut products tainted with Salmonella typhimurium.
Rector said that under questioning from Whatcom County public-health officials, he and wife Shannon narrowed the likely source of poisoning to the Austin brand of peanut-butter crackers, one of more than 2,100 products that have been voluntarily recalled during the nationwide salmonella outbreak. Contaminated peanut products traced to peanut butter and peanut paste made by a Peanut Corp. of America plant in Blakely, Ga., also have been linked to at least nine deaths nationwide.
The Food and Drug Administration has said the company knowingly released its products into the nationwide food chain, even though Peanut Corp. officials knew it was tainted with salmonella.
"It makes me sick that my 3-year-old and husband were hospitalized so this company could save a few bucks and not pay to keep their building up to code," Shannon, 29, said in an e-mail interview.
State media in China is reporting that at least 70 people have fallen ill after eating pork treated with the steroid clenbuterol, which is used to prevent animals from gaining fat, BBC News reported. The China Daily said on Monday that the people involved suffered from stomach pains and diarrhea after eating the tainted pork in southern China's Guangdong province over the past few days, with three victims still in hospital. Clenbuterol, a drug often given to people to treat asthma, has been administered to pigs in China to reduce their fat, despite being a banned food additive. The drug can sometimes be fatal for humans, although some athletes have used it to illegally build muscle. In 2006, some 336 people in Shanghai were hospitalized after eating pig meat or organs contaminated with the additive, the China Daily said.
Authorities in China say two men have been sentenced to death in a food-poisoning case that killed two diners and sickened 61 others in Shenzhen City. Ke Bizhi and Wang Ying were convicted of adding poison to food at a snack bar last February, Xinhua, China's state-run news agency, reported Monday. 
