Salmonella contaminates peanut butter products
And this news, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a release advising consumers to postpone eating cookies, crackers, candy and ice cream that contain peanut butter or peanut paste. The agency is currently trying to establish which products are contaminated with the strain of salmonella typhimurium which has killed six individuals and sickened four hundred and seventy-four persons. The risk has been traced back to the Peanut Corporation of America’s Blakely, Georgia plant, where the tests conducted by the Georgia Department of Agriculture found peanut butter positive for salmonella. The company distributes the paste to food manufacturers to be used as an ingredient in many commercially produced products including cakes, cookies, crackers, candies, cereal and ice cream.
The warning to U.S. citizens should also alert Belizeans because several of the brands that are being removed from shelves around North America are currently on shelves in Belize. The Kellogg Company announced recall of sixteen items including the Austin Brand, Famous Amos Peanut Butter Cookies and Keebler Soft Batch Homestyle Peanut Butter Cookies. Kellogg is one of eighty-five companies which bought peanut butter and peanut paste produced in the Georgia plant. Also being recalled are the popular Little Debbie brand and Shurfine Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream. Hy-Vee Inc. is voluntarily recalling the following products made in its bakery departments including Peanut Butter Reese’s Pieces Cookies, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Lunchbox Reese’s Pieces Cookies. Doctor Michael Deshield, Director of the Food Safety Department at the Belize Agricultural Health Authority, explained what they are doing to address this situation.
Dr. Michael Deshield, Director of Food Safety, BAHA
“We’ve been watching the situation, we get our information like most people do on the news, but we also have a food safety network and we were informed of all of this here and what we’ve been doing is have our quarantine guys check our database for what’s been imported here to see if any of those products were imported here. We also look at the lot dates; the batch that is affect to make sure that we don’t take stuff off that doesn’t necessarily need to come off. Right now it’s an ongoing investigation so we don’t have a clear idea specifically what is and what’s not. We have some brand names that have been mentioned but the F.D.A. is not giving more specific information on that. In the meantime, what we have to do is look at what the batch numbers have been there and see if we have those products on the markets and then talk to the distributors and the importers and then we have the database to say that they will take them voluntarily; it’s a voluntary recall at the moment. There is not a heck of a lot of those products here but they are here and the best thing we can say right now is basically for consumers to be aware of this outbreak because it is a dangerous one; salmonella. We’ve had problems with salmonella in tomatoes in the past if you remember and then peanut butter some years ago which we have done some research and testing here as well. So we intend to do some of that as well here. We’ve had a couple of our food safety inspectors who are actually checking some of the shelves and saying where these things are so we can do follow up and we’re working with Ministry of Health.”
We checked with two of the major supermarkets, James Brodies and Save U Supermarket. Both companies indicated that while certain products may be on their shelves, they are not importers or distributors of the brands that are being recalled in the USA. Dr. Deshield says that BAHA will be issuing alerts in this weekend’s newspaper and also updating the media to any additional products that could potentially affect the health of Belizean consumers.
