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The peanut butter probe (yikes sounds risque) looks like it is being conducted by the Three Stooges. Real Clear politics reports
"But clearly, what began as an investigation of bulk peanut butter shipped to nursing homes and institutional cafeterias is now much broader.
It includes not just peanut butter, but baked goods and other products that contain peanuts and are sold directly to consumers. Health officials say as many as one-third of the people who got sick did not recall eating peanut butter."
Today the AP is reporting the FDA is urging people to avoid all products containing peanut butter.
Food and Water Watch summed it up perfectly:“Although it’s the beginning of a new year, the Food and Drug Administration is proving that nothing has changed when it comes to food safety and protecting American consumers. Four days after King Nut issued a recall announcement for its peanut butter that was manufactured by the Peanut Corporation of America due to a Salmonella outbreak, the Food and Drug Administration has finally issued a recall press release today. Unfortunately, FDA’s dilatory response is too late for many – as of yesterday, three deaths have been associated with the Salmonella outbreak, and hundreds of people have been sickened….
Statement of Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch Executive Director
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Both my kids had what we euphemistically call “stomach problems” within the last 6 weeks. They both said that many of their friends in elementary and high school did, too. Could have been a virus, but with all the peanut butter in so many products they eat, we don’t know.
Was it in the granola bars they ate? the cheese-peanut-butter crackers? peanut butter sandwiches at school? peanut butter cookies? peanut butter filled candies? We don’t know.
So sad that they can’t identify batches, for starters.
An estimated 40,000 cases of salmonella infection are reported each year in the United States, but those are only the reported cases, Mody said. “Those are only the cases that are severe enough to have a person go to a doctor. It’s been estimated that the actual number of total salmonella cases could be 30 times or more as great,” he said.
Mody said there probably have been many unreported cases in the current outbreak. “If someone has mild symptoms, they might not seek health care,” he said.
http://www.medicinenet.com/scr…..ekey=95579
Consumer safety should be the primary function –not saving the business.
As soon as they realized this company sold product to other producers, those products should have been recalled as well.
Yeah, CDC reported an estimate based on 1999 data that there were approximately
– 76 million illnesses
– 325,000 hospitalizations
– 5,000 deaths
each year in the United States due to food-borne pathogens.
If this was an attack by a terrorist, it’d get some attention, but it’s just peanut butter and spinach and burger packaged by corporations along with Auntie’s potato salad so it’s just a boo-boo, nothing to see here, move along…
Can’t even begin to imagine what this costs our health care system.
Yep. If the (presumed) virus was prevalent, they could consider whether kids with peanut allergies, or those too young to eat nuts (and not vaccinated against rotavirus), caught it.
If so, that would point to it really being a virus. Presuming, of course, peanuts and peanut products are the correct and sole source.