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Jan 12, 2009 07:30 PM | 2
Turns out it was the peanut butter. The typhimurium type, if you must know.
Minnesota health officials confirmed today that the salmonella strain -- also known as a serotype -- found in a 5-pound container of King Nut peanut butter on Friday is the same as the strain that has wreaked havoc in 410 people in 43 U.S. states, at last count.
King Nut, of Solon, Ohio, had recalled all King Nut and Parnell's Pride peanut butter on Saturday. The brands are not sold in grocery stores, but are distributed to health care institutions, universities, delis, and other facilities that use bulk food products.
This will mark at least the third outbreak linked to contaminated peanut butter: A 2006-07 outbreak sickened more than 600 people in 47 states, and a 1996 outbreak in Australia left more than 500 people with the abdominal cramping, diarrhea, and fever typical of the illness.
See yesterday's post for more on why Salmonella is tough to kill once it's in peanut butter.
Photo of (uncontaminated) peanut butter by lucianvenutian via Flickr
Tags:
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peanut butter,
salmonella
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2 Comments
Add Commentwould not it come from the icing sugar like it did from the 3rd world flour?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn a September 2007 article of Scientific American entitled " Is Your Food Contaminated?"; it seems apparent that the new technologies available to detect, track and trace need to be implemented. Such examples as: Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags will trace the history of a project. Active Packaging can serve like biosensors that with monoclonal antibodies in association with cellophane will detect various pathogenic microorganisms by binding to enzymes of metabolites produced by microbes. Edible Tags can be affixed to various fruits and vegetables.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe FDA needs to be held accountable in the way that they handle food borne outbreaks but also in the way they function to prevent, manage and have the will to function as a whole. There needs to be universal methods for culturing and identifiying bacterial, viral and other food contaminates. They need not only the resources but a much greater number of inspectors, technicians, microbiologists and organizational managers that can make a highly coordinated team.
Retired Food Microbiologist
Frank J. Carr B.S. R.M. S.M. (A.A.M.)
3700 Chateau Lane Apt. 40
1-502-718-9633
frankcarrlabs@hotmail.com