Food Safety Needs Shot of Political Will
My law firm, Pritzker | Olsen, P.A., represents the families of two people who died and many people who were injured in the ongoing peanut butter and peanut paste Salmonella outbreak that has sickened over 500 people and killed at least eight.
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspection of the Blakely, Georgia, plant owned by the Peanut Corporation of America and believed to be the source of the outbreak revealed a shocking lack of safety controls and sanitation that likely caused this outbreak. A criminal investigation may already be underway, especially in light of the allegation that the plant sold adulterated peanut products after they tested positive for Salmonella.
Criminal charges, if any, and law firms like mine will eventually hold the wrongdoers accountable for this lethal Salmonella outbreak. Without question, far more money will be spent by those wrongdoers and their insurers for the harm they caused as compared with the paltry sum it would have taken to prevent the outbreak from occurring in the first place.
Thus, the real question is not how or why this outbreak occurred, but rather why it was not prevented in the first place?
The answer, simply enough, is because our food safety system is unsafe and needs an overhaul and a significant infusion of money and political will.
Consider this:
- According to the FDA, in fiscal year 2008, the agency inspected 5,930 domestic food establishments. Great! The problem is that there are 65,520 domestic food production facilities in the United States. According to Consumers Union, “This means that FDA is still inspecting U.S. food production facilities only once every 10 years.”
- The FDA oversees 80 percent of the nation’s food supply, but only receives 20 percent of food safety funding.
- The FDA’s entire budget is actually less than the budget for the school system in Montgomory County, MD, where the FDA resides.
- The FDA has no legal authority to actually require a recall of adulterated food.
- There is no law that requires food companies to complete a food safety plan including a food safety risk analysis that identifies potential sources of contamination, identifies appropriate food safety controls, and documents those controls in a food safety plan subject to FDA review.
There are no shortage of FDA regulatory critiques or bills intended to increase funding and food safety regulation. There has been, however, a lack of political will. Maybe that is changing. But not fast enough for our clients and the harms and losses they already suffered.
Food Safety in Minnesota – Time for Change
I am a food safety lawyer. I represent foodborne illness survivors in cases against food producers and retailers responsible for selling food poisoned with E. coli, Salmonella, Shigella, Listeria, Campylobacter, and other dangerous pathogens.
Minnesota and 42 other states are in the midst of the latest foodborne outbreak: adulterated peanut butter and peanut paste traced back to the Blakely, Georgia plant of Peanut Corporation of America. This outbreak has sickened scores of Minnesotans and has been implicated in at least three deaths including senior citizens Shirley Almer and Clifford Tousignant, both of whom were residents of nursing homes in the Brainerd area (our firm represents Ms. Almer’s heirs).
Although the Minnesota Department of Health was instrumental in identifying the source of this outbreak (as well as another well-publicized Salmonella outbreak involving peppers in 2008), Minnesota can and should do more to protect its citizens from the dangers of unsafe food. For example, many states, not including Minnesota, require that restaurants post the results of sanitation inspections. The obvious reason is that consumers, armed with the knowledge of which restaurants are clean and safe, can make informed choices about which establishments to patronize. Posting such scores is also a strong incentive for restaurant owners to clean and maintain their restaurants so as not to get poor scores in the first place.
Minnesota should also require more explicit food labeling (even if it means that such laws run afoul of federal labeling laws). As this peanut butter recall painfully illustrates, it’s often difficult to trace back commercial ingredients to their source. Thus, many Minnesota stores – large and small – continue to sell products containing the recalled peanut paste. With more effective labeling, sellers could quickly determine if products contain recalled ingredients and remove them from sale.
As Minnesotans, we can be proud of the stellar job performed by the Minnesota Department of Health and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. However, we can and should do more to protect our citizens from the dangers of food poisoning.
Important Information about the Peanut Butter Outbreak from One of America’s Leading Food Safety Law Firms
Federal and state agencies have confirmed that the sources of the outbreak of illnesses caused by Salmonella Typhimurium are peanut butter and peanut paste produced by the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) at its Blakely, Georgia processing plant.
Peanut butter is sold by PCA in bulk containers ranging in size from five (5) to 1,700 pounds. The peanut paste is sold in sizes ranging from 35-pound containers to product sold by the tanker container. Neither of these products is sold directly to consumers.
It has been determined that PCA distributed potentially contaminated product to more than 70 consignee firms, for use as an ingredient in hundreds of different products, such as cookies, crackers, cereal, candy and ice cream. Companies all over the country that received product from PCA have issued voluntary recalls of their products. The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has created a searchable database for these products, which can be found at http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/peanutbutterrecall/index.cfm. Identification of products subject to recall is continuing and this list is updated frequently.
Pritzker | Olsen, P.A. is a leading food safety law firm with a national reputation for success in representing food poisoning victims.
Our firm is already representing the family of the first wrongful death victim of the peanut butter outbreak as well as many other victims throughout the United States.
We are accepting peanut butter outbreak cases involving those people:
- Who have given stool samples that tested positive for salmonella and have eaten recalled product; or
- Who have received medical and/or hospital treatment and have been diagnosed with Salmonella symptoms (even if the stool sample was not obtained or was negative); or
- Who received medical treatment with Salmonella-like symptoms and still have the contaminated product believed to have caused the illness.
We are not accepting the following cases:
- People who did not receive medical treatment and do not have the contaminated product believed to have caused the illness.
If you or a loved meet our selection criteria, please promptly contact us at fhp@pritzkerlaw.com ,by fax at 612-338-0104 or on the telephone at 1-888-377-8900 (toll-free).
