Well, it’s official. This peanut butter Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak is out of control. I can barely keep up with the fast and furious announcements coming from the various state and national health agencies, and the recalls from food product manufacturers whose products were made with the implicated peanut butter. For a more complete, play-by-play source of information about this outbreak, please see some of the many excellent articles over at Bill Marler’s site: http://www.marlerblog.com/
Today’s big development to this ongoing saga comes from the FDA in the form of their announcement that ALL peanut butter products manufactured by Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) at their Blakely, Georgia over the past two years are being recalled. Why such a large increase in the recall’s scope? Click here to find out (and be simultaneously disgusted).
It turns out that since January of 2007, PCA has been producing peanut butter under insanitary conditions. Even worse, at least twelve separate times, finished product was tested by PCA and the results returned positive for Salmonella. After PCA had the product retested, however, the results were negative and the product was shipped in interstate commerce where it was added to food products for the public to eat. So, are you angry yet?