FDA halts operations at peanut butter plant

MARY CLARE JALONICK

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion halted oper­a­tions of the country’s largest organic peanut but­ter proces­sor Mon­day, crack­ing down on sal­mo­nella poi­son­ing for the first time with the new enforce­ment author­ity the agency gained in a 2011 food safety law.

FDA offi­cials found sal­mo­nella all over Sun­land Inc.’s New Mex­ico pro­cess­ing plant after 41 peo­ple in 20 states, most of them chil­dren, were sick­ened by peanut but­ter man­u­fac­tured at the Sun­land plant and sold at Trader Joe’s gro­cery chain. The FDA sus­pended Sunland’s reg­is­tra­tion Mon­day, pre­vent­ing the com­pany from pro­duc­ing or dis­trib­ut­ing any food.

The food safety law gave the FDA author­ity to sus­pend a company’s reg­is­tra­tion when food man­u­fac­tured or held there has a “rea­son­able prob­a­bil­ity” of caus­ing seri­ous health prob­lems or death. Before the food safety law was enacted early last year, the FDA would have had to go to court to sus­pend a company’s registration.

Sun­land had planned to reopen its peanut pro­cess­ing facil­ity on Tues­day and a spokes­woman said before the FDA’s announce­ment Mon­day that the com­pany hoped to be sell­ing peanut but­ter again by the end of the year. The spokes­woman didn’t have imme­di­ate com­ment on the suspension.

The com­pany now has the right to a hear­ing and must prove to the agency that its facil­i­ties are clean enough to reopen.

Michael Tay­lor, the FDA’s deputy com­mis­sioner for foods, said the FDA’s abil­ity to sus­pend a reg­is­tra­tion like this one is a major step for­ward for the agency.

“Con­sumers can be assured that prod­ucts will not leave this facil­ity until we deter­mine they have imple­mented pre­ven­tive mea­sures that are effec­tive to pro­duce safe prod­ucts,” Tay­lor said.

Sun­land Inc. is the nation’s largest organic peanut but­ter proces­sor, though it also pro­duces many non-organic prod­ucts. The com­pany recalled hun­dreds of organic and non-organic nuts and nut but­ters man­u­fac­tured since 2010 after Trader Joe’s Valen­cia Creamy Peanut But­ter was linked to the sal­mo­nella ill­nesses in September.

In addi­tion to Trader Joe’s, Sun­land sold hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent peanut prod­ucts to many of the nation’s other large gro­cery chains, includ­ing Whole Foods, Safe­way, Tar­get and others.

In a month­long inves­ti­ga­tion in Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber, after the out­break linked to proces­sor Sun­land and to Trader Joe’s, FDA inspec­tors found sam­ples of sal­mo­nella in 28 dif­fer­ent loca­tions in the plant, in 13 nut but­ter sam­ples and in one sam­ple of raw peanuts.

The agency also found improper han­dling of the prod­ucts, unclean equip­ment and uncov­ered trail­ers of peanuts out­side the facil­ity that were exposed to rain and birds.

The FDA said that over the past three years, the com­pany shipped prod­ucts even though por­tions of their lots, or daily pro­duc­tion runs, tested pos­i­tive for sal­mo­nella in inter­nal tests. The agency also found that the inter­nal tests failed to find sal­mo­nella when it was present.

FDA inspec­tors found many of the same prob­lems — includ­ing employ­ees putting their bare fin­gers in to empty jars before they were filled, open bags of ingre­di­ents, unclean equip­ment, and many other vio­la­tions — in a 2007 inspec­tion. Sim­i­lar prob­lems were recorded by inspec­tors in 2009, 2010 and 2011, though gov­ern­ment offi­cials didn’t take any action or release the results of those inspec­tions until after the ill­nesses were dis­cov­ered this year.

In a state­ment ear­lier this month, Sun­land offi­cials denied that they know­ingly shipped tainted products.

“At no time in its 24-year his­tory has Sun­land, Inc. released for dis­tri­b­u­tion any prod­ucts that it knew to be poten­tially con­t­a­m­i­nated with harm­ful microor­gan­isms,” Sun­land pres­i­dent and CEO Jim­mie Shearer said in a state­ment on the company’s web­site. “In every instance where test results indi­cated the pres­ence of a con­t­a­m­i­nant, the impli­cated prod­uct was destroyed and not released for distribution.”

A sep­a­rate peanut but­ter out­break in 2009 not related to Sun­land was linked to hun­dreds of ill­nesses and nine deaths.

Posted by AP News on Nov 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.