ROCKVILLE Md. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is urging manufacturers, institutions and foodservice operators that use bulk peanut butter or peanut paste from Peanut Corp. of America to hold back products made from those substances because of potential contamination by salmonella typhimurium.
Officials of the FDA and federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday said a PCA plant in Georgia is “a likely source” of salmonella that so far has been linked to 453 illnesses and “associated with five deaths” in 43 states and Canada. Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, urged users of bulk peanut butter and paste to check their supply chain records to determine if they use PCA products and, if so, take precautionary steps.
Aregularly updated FDA website with information about federal and multi-state government investigations into the outbreak, as well as links to posted information about associated manufacturer and distributor recalls, is at http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/salmonellatyph.html#update. Specifics about the manufacturing lot numbers, products and brands involved in the investigations and recalls can be found in information available at the site, or links posted there.
In a move that may become more common in the days ahead given the widespread use of peanut butter and paste in food manufacturing and preparation, Kellogg Co. on Friday recalled certain Austin, Famous Amos and Keebler brand cookies as well as crackers made with those substances. The voluntary recall by Battle Creek, Mich.-based Kellogg, followed one by PCA in Lynchburg, Va., and by Solon, Ohio-based King Nut Cos., a distributor of peanut butter manufactured for them by PCA, which asked customers to pull products under the King Nut and Parnell’s Pride labels.
ACDC official, speaking during the same press conference as Sundlof, said about 20 percent of the people infected in the outbreak have required hospitalization. He said that while the strain of salmonella involved is rarely detected, it is no more virulent than other more common varieties.
According to the CDC, eating food contaminated with salmonella can result in abdominal cramping, diarrhea and fever. Symptoms typically develop 12 to 72 hours after infection and usually last four to seven days, with most individuals recovering without treatment. In some persons, the diarrhea may be so severe as to necessitate hospitalization, the federal agency said, and, in rare circumstances the organism can enter the bloodstream, resulting in severe complications.