Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

by Christina Lovato, University of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service

"To say that food safety in this country is a patchwork system is just giving it too much credit. Food safety in America has too often become a hit-or-miss gamble, and that is truly frightening... When Americans can't count on the safety of basic items like peanut butter that goes into our kids sandwiches... It's a healthy food... if that's not safe then we have to ask what is." said Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA.)

In a full hearing today, the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry listened while witnesses and Senators discussed the most recent peanut butter recall. On January 16, the Connecticut Department of Public Health Laboratory discovered where an outbreak strain of Typhimurium, a serotype or a different kind of Salmonella, was coming from. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigators reported that the peanut processing plant, Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) in Blakely, Georgia, which produces peanut butter, peanut paste, and other peanut products was selling their products to many food companies which then was spread out and created the outbreak strain.

"As of yesterday we've had 575 persons from 43 states and one person from Canada who have been infected with this outbreak strain. Starting from September 1st of last year until January 21st of this year a total of 127 people have required hospitalization and the infection tragically contributed to the death of 8 persons." said Ali S. Khan, Assistant Surgeon General and Deputy Director of the National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-borne, and Enteric Diseases, at the Center for Disease Control.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) didn't like hearing that PCA had been involved in past cases of Salmonella distribution. He said, "This kind of company should have been shut down immediately. A full sign of Salmonella, you go back and clean everything out. I'm even asking for criminal prosecutions for this. If they think well we get caught, maybe a recall, maybe we'll get a fine as a cost of doing business well in this case its been people who have lost their lives. It's certainly been an enormous cost to companies who may have totally safe products but they've had to recall it... I want to see some people go to jail!"

Because an investigation is timely Khan suggested what would help speed up the process. "We need new tools at the local, state and national level to investigate these outbreaks... We need new information tools... We need new ways to standardize, analyze bring information together in real time to so right away to understand what is going on...We need better investment at the state and local level to actually make these diagnosis quickly, do the testing very quickly, do the interviews quickly... and then hand that off to FDA so they can do their timely response." he said.

According to the FDA website on January 30, 2009, the FDA confirmed that their Office of Criminal Investigations was involved in a Justice Department investigation of PCA. Consumers are urged to check FDA's web site to determine which products have been recalled and those that will be recalled in the coming days.