Dead rodents, excrement in peanut butter plant lead to recall (Texas plant)

[Omaha Steve]

Source: CNN

(CNN) -- The Texas Department of State Health Services on Thursday ordered the recall of all products ever shipped from the Peanut Corporation of America's plant in Plainview, Texas, after discovering dead rodents, rodent excrement and bird feathers in the plant.

The order, which applies to products shipped since the plant opened nearly four years ago, came a day after the discovery of filth in a crawl space above a production area during a health services inspection, the department said in a news release.

Inspectors also reported that the plant's ventilation system was pulling debris "from the infested crawl space into production areas of the plant resulting in the adulteration of exposed food products," the release said.

Officials at the plant, which opened in March 2005, voluntarily stopped operations Monday night.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/12/peanut.butter.recall/

[Xipe Totec]

1. They were capers, I tell you!

Just our way of saying we love you Thisssss....... Much. :hug:




:sarcasm:

[MadMaddie]

2. WTF? There better be major charges against the owner

they have killed Americans and sickend hundreds of others. Absolutley criminal...

[Politicalboi]

3. I worked in a Titanium factory

And it was probably cleaner than this place.

[Tab]

4. I don't think I'm eating peanut butter ever again.

:puke:

[catgirl]

5. Time to make your own peanut butter people!

Whole Foods (and other markets) have peanut butter stations where you grind your own.

[BumRushDaShow]

8. Some Whole Foods Markets bought peanuts from this Texas plant however

and had to pull them. So they are not immune. You may have to grow your own. :puke:

[catgirl]

10. Yikes!

[wordpix]

30. just check where you get the p-nuts from

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

6. Why isn't the ratfuck CEO of this company

already in the fucking slammer under $10 million or so bail. This criminal, parasitic (and undoubtedly Repuke) pig fucker should never see the light of day again. :grr: :rant:

[wordpix]

29. agree he's no doubt a "get government off our backs" antiregulatory repuke

:grr:

[Downwinder]

7. George's pigeons coming back to roost.

And we're supposed to eat the droppings.

[Xipe Totec]

11. Good one!

:rofl:

[NOW tense]

12. !

:puke: :rofl:

[wordpix]

31. King Gorge's pet pigeons will unfortunately be coming home to roost & drop shit for decades to come

[orfannkyl]

9. PBnJ

Nothing says good like rat feces

[BlueJazz]

16. LOL!

:rofl:

[Double T]

13. I support CEO and executive management water-boarding and torture.

How about YOU? Gitmo must survive to provide justice to wall street and corporate criminals.

[gvstn]

14. The question is

Why was this inspection just done now? If an owner with three restaurants has one filled with cockroaches, peeling paint and mold wouldn't you immediately check out the other two?

I assumed such an inspection went on within days of the Georgia plant being inspected and found dirty. Silly me!

I guess they'll take a look at the Virginia facility sometime this Spring--if they can find the time.:eyes:

[hedgehog]

15. What kind of food plant has crawl spaces, anyways? The ones I worked at

were made of reinforced concrete slabs.

[Kablooie]

17. I read that the facilities weren't made for food processing.

[Kablooie]

18. I only buy peanuts that wear top hats and monocles. Those are safe.

[Javaman]

19. Hey! you put rat shit in my peanut butter! Hey, you put peanut butter on my rat shit! nt

[surrealAmerican]

22. ... rat shit peanut butter cup.

You're on to something there; it's all a matter of how to market the stuff. "Are you tough enough to eat fecal-laced peanut butter?"

[gvstn]

23. LOL! nt

[Javaman]

20. Kinda makes you yearn for soylent green. nt

[depakid]

21. Fun Facts from the USDA

Don't look too carefully at your toast this morning - American regulators have decided that it can safely contain one rodent hair for every 50g of the flour that goes into it. Your cup of coffee can contain 14 allegedly rodent-sourced carcinogens. And the canned tomatoes that you might have with your bacon are allowed up to either two maggots or 10 fly eggs in every 500g can.
AgResearch food safety scientist Guill Le Roux told New Zealand's annual food safety summit in Takapuna yesterday that people who objected to genetically modified food did not seem to realise that all food involved risks. "You can't have zero risks," he said. "Some degree of contamination of all foods is inevitable and regulations allow certain levels which, fortunately for the general public, is not well known."

New Zealand laws ban any food that is "unfit for human consumption or contaminated". The Food Safety Authority said the law did not define allowable levels of contamination. But Mr Le Roux said the US Food and Drug Administration defined "levels of natural or unavoidable defects in foods that present no health hazards for humans".

The list on its website is disarmingly explicit. Maggots, for example, present "no health hazard" as long as they average less than one maggot in every 250ml of orange juice, two in every 100g of tomato juice or 20 in every 100g of mushrooms.
Rodent hairs are allowed at the rate of up to one in every 100g of peanut butter, one in every 450g of popcorn or 4.5 hairs in every 225g of macaroni or noodles. Wheat can contain up to 9mg of rodent droppings in every 450g of grain.
"Rats get into grain silos and get processed during milling, and rat droppings get into the grain. You just can't prevent it," Mr Le Roux said. "Any vegetables and fruit have a certain level of maggots, and if you reduce the pesticides you'll have an increased level of foreign bugs."

He said people who tried to protect their children from bugs by making their houses into completely sterile environments might actually increase their children's chances of developing allergies such as asthma, because they had built up no natural immunity.

More: http://archives.foodsafety.ksu.edu/fsnet/2004/9-2004/fsnet_sept_1.htm

[legin]

24. A previous recall (1990)

(snip)

On Sept. 14, 1990, PCA sent out an “Urgent Food Recall” notice to American Candy and maybe three-dozen other recipients of the Parnells’ peanut butter, according to a lawsuit filed in Bedford County Circuit Court in Virginia. A month earlier, the Food and Drug Administration informed the Parnells that the peanuts used to make the peanut butter “contained unacceptable high levels of aflatoxin,” a toxic mold. Consequently, PCA’s peanut butter and dark roasted peanut granules “exceed FDA established tolerance level for aflatoxin.”

(snip)

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2009/02/07/pca_history_peanut.html

__________________________________________________

(aflatoxin - about as poisonous as it gets)

[bitchkitty]

25. I don't care about peanut butter,

but I sure do miss boiled peanuts. In Georgia, especially on the way to the mountains, there are a lot of roadside stands that sell boiled peanuts. Boiled goobers! Yum yum yum!

[AnneD]

26. ******Gag Alert*****

We are omnivores meaning we can eat almost anything. Our digestive system is a tube within a tube and can tolerate a lost. These pathogens can be taken care of by our immune system for the most part. It is those with weakened immune systems that are in danger. The rest of us may get diarrhea or vomit but we survive.

If you knew how many particles of bugs exoskeletons are allowed in chocolate you might think twice before ever eating it. And if you think growing it yourself is the answer-you've never found a worm in your home grown corn or apples.

I worry less about the bugs but more about the feces and dead rodents. Mice and rats love peanuts-that's what we always baited our traps with. They will always be around so one must take extra care to test for those contaminants. You can seldom get processed to 100% purity, although that is a great goal. Even Kosher is allowed 10% 'contaminant' and still remain kosher.

What I am saying is you can go crazy thinking about this stuff. As a Nurse-I try to get the highest quality I can and close my eye's and pray before I eat that I can handle it. Know your source, and folks should practice common sense hygiene.

The peanuts recalled were a paste, whole peanuts were not.

[buckrogers1965]

27. I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.

You know what is worse than finding a worm in your apple? Finding half a worm in your apple.

Don't people have any pride in the place where they work? Couldn't someone have cleaned this place up, even if the bosses didn't want them to do so. Why would the bosses not want their factory to be clean and tidy? Couldn't have been a healthy place to work either, if the level of contamination from the air ducts was enough to make food bad.

And the companies that bought food from this plant are just as much at fault. Do none of them tour and inspect their suppliers factories to ensure that working conditions and food cleanliness is taken care of? This reflects badly on any company that used them as a supplier.

If the companies each inspected all their plants in different months, then these plants could be getting inspected monthly.

And finally. Where the hell were the local, state, and federal food inspectors?

Everyone who put knowingly put this poisoned food into our system needs to die. The inspectors that failed to do their jobs. The CEO that ordered the food shipped, after it was found to be contaminated. Anyone that obeyed the orders of the CEO and knowingly shipped the poison food. Kill each and every one of them.

If there was ever a case for the death penalty, then poisoning millions of people and killing dozens has to rise to that level. If this case doesn't deserve the death penalty, then nobody ever deserves a death penalty ever again.

If these pieces of crap that shipped poison food had even a tiny sliver of human decency, they would kill themselves so that we wouldn't waste any more money or time to put them on trial. But of course they don't. Let that CEO get put in charge of another company someday, and he will just do the same thing again. He doesn't care who he hurts or kills, as long as he makes a buck.

[wordpix]

28. I have long wondered if the rampant p-nut allergies are from contaminants of some kind

Maybe I was right, although the contaminants I was thinking of were pesticides and fungicides. Apparently those weren't used at this plant.