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In Thursday’s lengthy synopsis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the current investigation into the ongoing Salmonella outbreak, there was a fleeting mention of an intriguing finding.
A Pritzker | Olsen review of the document noticed that the CDC said it is taking a closer look at a laboratory correlation made recently by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.
After being the first laboratory in the country to associate the current Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak with peanut butter made at the Blakely, Georgia, peanut processing plant of Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), Minnesota health investigators continued to test peanut butter that came from the plant.
On January 22, they found that a recently manufactured, previously unopened container of King Nut peanut butter made at the Blakely plant by PCA yielded Salmonella serotype Tennessee with a DNA fingerprint that was indistinguishable from the strain associated with the multistate Salmonella outbreak in 2006-2007. That outbreak was caused by contaminated Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter sold by ConAgra.
Even though the Salmonella Tennessee strain is not associated with an increase in illnesses in the current outbreak (529 sickened in 43 states), the CDC is digging into it. That’s partly because the implicated processing plant in the 2006-2007 outbreak is located approximately 70 miles from PCA’s plant in Blakely. The CDC put it this way:
“A possible association between the two outbreaks warrants further investigation. The relationship of the (Salmonella) Tennessee finding to the current outbreak is being investigated further.”
Pritzker | Olsen, a national food safety law firm, handled cases for victims in the Peter Pan peanut butter Salmonella outbreak. In the current outbreak, founder and president Fred Pritzker is representing the families of two Minnesotans who died with Salmonella infections that matched the outbreak strain.
Earlier this week, Pritzker filed a wrongful death lawsuit against PCA on behalf of the heirs of Shirley Mae Almer, 72, of Perham. A second suit is expected to be filed soon for the family of Doris Flatgard, 87, who died January 4. Both women were living in long-term care facilities in Brainerd that served King Nut peanut butter.
