Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella, Calif., said it was recalling all lots of roasted in-shell pistachios, roasted shelled pistachios and raw shelled pistachios that were produced from nuts harvested in 2008.

Last week, the company recalled a small portion of that harvest — about 2 million pounds — on the theory that it may have been contaminated by a sanitation mistake that affected just one or two production lines.

But after the Food and Drug Administration and the California Department of Public Health took hundreds of samples from the plant and its products for laboratory analysis, Setton Pistachio announced last night that it was pulling more pistachio nuts from the market. Government investigators found salmonella in critical areas of the facility but did not provide details yesterday.

Because Setton supplies about 35 wholesalers and food manufacturers that repackage the nuts for retail sale or use them as ingredients in other products, federal officials said it could take weeks before a comprehensive list of affected products is available. The FDA has begun compiling a searchable database of recalled consumer products, which can be found at http://www.fda.gov. It already includes some well-known labels such as Frito-Lay, Planters, Kirkland and the 365 brand sold by Whole Foods Market.

Consumers should not eat pistachios or foods containing the nuts unless they can determine that the nuts are not part of the recall, FDA officials said. And wholesalers, retailers and restaurants should not sell products containing pistachios unless they know the source, federal officials said.

The recall is voluntary; the FDA does not have legal authority to mandate that a manufacturer recall its product. Setton Pistachio distributes its products nationwide and to 14 other countries.

The FDA is also investigating a sister plant, Setton International Foods, which is based in Commack, N.Y., on Long Island. That company, which makes chocolate- and yogurt-covered nuts, failed its March 9 inspection by New York state officials, who found cockroaches and rodent droppings in the facility.

No illnesses have been linked to the nuts from Setton. Two people have complained to the FDA that they got sick after eating pistachios, but health officials have not made any definitive connection to the nuts in question. Salmonella can cause diarrhea, fever and cramping. The infection can be fatal to children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems.

The FDA learned about problems at Setton Pistachio on March 23 when it was notified by Kraft Foods that its internal testing found four strains of salmonella in a trail mix made with Setton’s pistachios. Yesterday, a spokeswoman for the food giant said that it had actually detected salmonella in its trail mix as early as December 2007, but that it took 15 months to link it to the pistachios.

Kraft spokeswoman Susan Davidson said Georgia Nut, which makes the trail mix under a contract with Kraft, found salmonella in samples on four occasions between December 2007 and last month. In each case, Kraft destroyed the suspect product and Georgia Nut tested its equipment and raw ingredients to try to identify the source of the contamination, Davidson said.

Kraft did not notify the FDA about the earlier test results because none of the affected products entered the food supply, she said.

“We believed there was no public health risk,” she said, adding that Georgia Nut conducted hundreds of tests of its equipment, facility and raw ingredients. Only in March did officials at Georgia Nut and Kraft realize that pistachios were the single common ingredient among the batches of trail mix that had tested positive for salmonella, she said.

Under state and federal law, neither Kraft nor Georgia Nut are required to notify regulators about internal tests that show a food contaminated with bacteria.

Meanwhile, the pistachio industry took the unusual step yesterday of launching a Web site (http://www.pistachiorecall.org) that lists products not affected by the recall. The industry is hoping to reassure consumers and prevent the sharp drop in sales that devastated the peanut industry earlier this year after a nationwide outbreak of salmonella illness was traced to a Georgia peanut firm, said Richard Matoian of the Western Pistachio Association, which represents more than 400 pistachio growers in California, Arizona and New Mexico.

Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based health advocacy group, said the industry Web site is a great idea. “In these really large ingredient recalls, consumers really need to know which products are not affected,” she said.

Pistachio Firm Expands Recall Over Salmonella

Related posts

• U.S. Broadens List of Peanut Products to Avoid Eating (0)
• Salmonella prompts peanut butter recall (0)
• Swine flu diagnosed in Elyria (0)
• Salmonella death in Minnesota brings U.S. total to 7 (0)
• New flu tests will speed up detection, CDC says (0)

The law has been in the works since October last year after a huge scandal erupted over contaminated milk which killed at least six children and sickened nearly 300,000 others in China.

“The law will see the establishment of a monitoring and supervision system, a set of national standards on food safety, a recall system, and severe punishment for offenders,” the official Xinhua news agency said.

China’s huge and poorly regulated food industry is regularly hit by scandals involving unsafe foods which harm public health and result in product recalls both at home and abroad.

In September, the tainted milk scandal — one of the biggest to hit the industry — caused a huge outcry, leading to China-made dairy product recalls and bans across the world.

A court in January sentenced the head of Sanlu — the dairy firm at the heart of the scandal — to life in prison for “manufacturing and selling fake or substandard products.”

Two others were sentenced to death over the incident, which saw the industrial chemical melamine added to watered-down milk to make it appear higher in protein.

Xinhua gave no further details of the content of the food safety law, but according to a previous report by the state-run agency, it would make health authorities directly responsible for approving additives in processed foods.

The agency also said it would prevent food safety authorities from issuing inspection exemptions to major food producers, as happened in the tainted milk scandal.

The law was passed by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, China’s top legislature.

China approves food safety law: state media

Related posts

• Milk scandal: 10,000 Chinese kids still ill (0)
• Lion Cub and Baby Orangutans Sickened by Tainted Chinese Milk (0)
• Chinese leader vows better food safety, ethics (0)
• Tainted milk crisis hits more global companies (0)
• Nearly 53,000 Chinese children sick from milk (0)

The woman had been living in a long-term care facility, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Health said on Saturday.

Her name and date of death were not released. It was the third death tied to salmonella in Minnesota.

The spokesman said he did not know if the woman had eaten peanut butter. Several products containing peanut butter have been recalled as the U.S. government investigates the outbreak of salmonella food poisoning.

On Wednesday, federal officials said the sole source of the U.S. salmonella outbreak involving contaminated peanut butter appears to be the Peanut Corp of America’s Blakely, Georgia, processing facility.

The company produces peanut butter for use in nursing homes and cafeterias, as well as a concentrated product used in many commercially produced products, including cakes, cookies, crackers, candies, cereal and ice cream.

More than 125 products including cookies, crackers, ice cream and even some pet foods have been recalled in connection with the outbreak, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said.

As of Wednesday evening, 491 people had been reported infected by a salmonella outbreak by public health authorities in 43 of the 50 U.S. states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on its website.

Salmonella can cause abdominal cramping, diarrhea and fever and it can kill the very young and very old.

Salmonella death in Minnesota brings U.S. total to 7 | U.S. | Reuters

Related posts

• U.S. Broadens List of Peanut Products to Avoid Eating (0)
• Salmonella prompts peanut butter recall (0)
• King Nut recalls salmonella-tainted peanut butter (0)
• Salmonella outbreak sickens 388 across U.S. (0)
• Pistachio Firm Expands Recall Over Salmonella (0)

Federal health officials said the company’s peanut butter had not been conclusively linked to a national salmonella outbreak.

King Nut Companies said in a statement that it asked customers to stop distributing all peanut butter under its King Nut and Parnell’s Pride brands with a lot code that begins with the numeral “8.”

The peanut butter was distributed only through food service providers in Ohio, Michigan, North Dakota, Minnesota, Arizona, Idaho, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Florida. It was not sold directly to consumers.

Preliminary laboratory testing found salmonella bacteria in a 5-pound container of King Nut brand creamy peanut butter, the Minnesota Department of Health said Friday.

The Minnesota tests had not linked it to the type of salmonella in the outbreak that has sickened almost 400 people in 42 states, but the department said additional results are expected early next week.

The federal Food and Drug Administration also is analyzing samples of peanut butter from King Nut and Peanut Corporation, spokeswoman Stephanie Kwisnek said Sunday. The agency has not conclusively linked the peanut butter to the strain of salmonella that has sickened people in the outbreak, she said.

King Nut’s president, Martin Kanan, said Sunday that the recall involved approximately 1,000 cases of peanut butter. He said he did not know the names of the company’s customers, but he planned to release more details Monday.

“We don’t know exactly where they sell to,” Kanan said. “They could sell cross-state, too.”

“We just want everybody to know that safety is our highest priority,” Kanan said. “We just wanted to recall it right away.”

King Nut, based in Solon, Ohio, said it canceled all orders with the manufacturer of its two peanut butter brands, Peanut Corporation of America, based in Lynchburg, Va.

Peanut Corporation said in a statement posted on its Web site that it is working with federal food and health officials to determine whether its products are connected to the national outbreak. PCA does not sell its products at grocery stores or directly to the public.

The Lynchburg company said the tainted container was found in the kitchen of a nursing facility, leaving it open to the possibility of cross-contamination from another source. The company did not say where the nursing facility was located or when the contaminated product was discovered.

Peanut Corporation’s owner and president, Stewart Parnell, declined to comment further on Sunday until the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention complete their investigation.

CDC spokeswoman Bernadette Burden said Sunday that she had no new information on the case and did not know when additional test results would be available.

The CDC said Friday that 399 cases had been confirmed nationally, with about one in five of victims hospitalized. California has reported the most cases, with 55, followed by Ohio with 53. All the illnesses began between Sept. 3 and Dec. 29, but most of the people grew sick after Oct. 1.

The CDC has not confirmed any deaths associated with the outbreak.

The report of peanut butter contamination comes almost two years after ConAgra recalled its Peter Pan brand peanut butter, which was eventually linked to at least 625 salmonella cases in 47 states.

CDC officials say the bacteria in the current outbreak has been genetically fingerprinted as the Typhimurium type, which is among the most common sources of salmonella food poisoning.

Salmonella prompts peanut butter recall on Yahoo! Health

Related posts

• U.S. Broadens List of Peanut Products to Avoid Eating (0)
• Salmonella death in Minnesota brings U.S. total to 7 (0)
• Pistachio Firm Expands Recall Over Salmonella (0)
• King Nut recalls salmonella-tainted peanut butter (0)
• FDA Orders Suicide Risk Warning for Epilepsy Drugs (0)

King Nut Cos, in a statement released Saturday, said it immediately contacted its customers and asked them to remove all King Nut peanut butter and Parnell’s Pride peanut butter from the market.

The Solon, Ohio-based King Nut supplies peanut butter to food service companies that distribute the products to institutions like hospitals, schools, restaurants and nursing homes. The brands are not sold directly to consumers.

King Nut said it asked customers to stop distributing all peanut butter with lot codes beginning with the number eight and has canceled orders with the manufacturer, Peanut Corporation of America.

Officials for Peanut Corporation of America, based in Lynchburg, Virginia, could not be immediately reached for comment.

Martin Kanan, King Nut’s chief executive, said, “because we don’t manufacture peanut butter, we will do what we can to get this product out of distribution and will work with the manufacturer to inform others of this problem.”

On Friday, Minnesota health officials issued a product alert for King Nut brand creamy peanut butter after finding a jar that was contaminated with a strain of salmonella linked to an outbreak across the United States.

Since September, the outbreak of salmonella food poisoning has sickened at least 399 people in 42 states and sent at least 70 people to the hospital, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC, Agriculture Department, Food and Drug Administration and state health officials are trying to trace the source of the outbreak.

An outbreak of salmonella was linked to Peter Pan brand peanut butter in 2007. ConAgra Foods Inc closed a Georgia plant after more than 300 people became ill in that outbreak.

King Nut recalls salmonella-tainted peanut butter | Health | Reuters

Related posts

• U.S. Broadens List of Peanut Products to Avoid Eating (0)
• Salmonella prompts peanut butter recall (0)
• Salmonella outbreak sickens 388 across U.S. (0)
• Salmonella death in Minnesota brings U.S. total to 7 (0)
• Swine flu diagnosed in Elyria (0)

The Dublin authorities ordered the dramatic recall of items including bacon, ham, sausages and even pizzas with ham toppings, after Ireland’s food watchdog revealed that pork products on a number of farms had up to 200 times more dioxins than the recognised safety limit.

Animal feed contaminated with the harmful toxins is thought to have infected pig products, including foods sold across Ireland and exported to the UK. The contamination has been traced back to an ingredient in an animal feed from one supplier used on 47 different farms.

Chronic long-term exposure to dioxins can have serious health effects, including causing cancers, although the Food Safety Authority of Ireland said the recall will ensure consumers only had minimum exposure to the toxin.

Consumers and retailers were told to destroy all Irish pork and bacon products bought since 1 September.

A spokesman for the British Food Standards Agency (FSA) said it was waiting for the Irish authorities to confirm if any affected products had been distributed to the UK. But he insisted the agency did not believe British consumers were at “significant” risk.

“The Agency will assess information as it becomes available in order to identify if any specific action is required to protect UK consumers,” the FSA said in a statement. “We do not believe there will be a significant risk to UK consumers.”

A Tesco spokeswoman said the supermarket did not import any fresh pork from the Republic of Ireland. “We do not believe it is contained in any other products, but we are checking as a matter of urgency. If any product is found to contain Irish pork, we will, of course, remove it from sale.”

The Independent

Related posts

• Worm ‘may help treat arthritis’ (0)
• What is inflammatory breast cancer and is it worse than regular breast cancer? (0)
• What Can You Do to Help Control Your Pain? (0)
• Weight gain in adulthood increases risk of colon cancer in men (0)
• Walking to fight breast cancer (0)