November 30, 2012
Why Peanut Butter is the Perfect Home for Salmonella
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
It’s not peanut butter jelly time. In fact, put down the peanut butter and walk away slowly. If the spread you are putting on your morning toast is from a jar of Organic Trader Joe’s Creamy Salted Valencia peanut butter, you may just want to stick with jelly. The reason? The Food and Drug Administration issued a summons to shut down the country’s largest organic peanut butter processor earlier this week, per the Associated Press.
Salmonella in peanut butter is no new discovery—in 2007, contaminated Peter Pan products resulted in 329 reported cases in 41 states—and this past September, Trader Joe’s voluntarily recalled its Creamy Salted Valencia Peanut Butter due to contamination with salmonella thought to be from Sunland, Inc., located in Portales, New Mexico. The outbreak of salmonella poisoning—41 people infected in 20 states—has since been traced to the New Mexico plant, which distributes to major food retailers including Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and Target. FDA inspections found samples of salmonella in 28 places in the plant—unclean equipment and uncovered trailers of peanuts outside of the factory, too. Not to worry, though, Sunland Inc. hasn’t manufactured peanut butter since the initial voluntary recall in September.
But how does salmonella get into peanut butter in the first place? Dr. Mike Doyle, who has assisted in helping Sunland getting their plants back up and running again and serves as director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, explains that peanuts grow in the ground and can be contaminated from a variety of sources: manure, water, wild animals—even the soil. Studies have shown that once present, salmonella can survive for many months—even years—in peanut butter, according to Scientific American. Before treatment, in fact, about two percent of all peanuts are contaminated with salmonella.
“When harvested, we assume there can be some salmonella present and we have to use a treatment to kill it,” Doyle says. A roaster with air temperatures set to about 300 degrees Fahrenheit destroys salmonella in peanuts. For this reason, this moment in the process is often referred to as the “kill step” by manufacturers. The biggest challenge, then, is to prevent contamination in processing plant after the roasting.
“Water is one of the biggest problems in dry food processing for salmonella proliferation,” Doyle says. “If water is available to salmonella, it will grow.”
Dry food manufacturers like a peanut plants or breakfast cereal producers, for example, must minimize the use of water in the plant. Everything from leaks in the roof to the water used to clean up a mess needs to be controlled.
So what can be done to prevent future contamination? There are a variety of things that can be done to upgrade systems and facilities, Doyle says. But all food processors are different in how they control harmful microbes in their plants. As for the Sunland plant, Doyle says they’ve traced the root cause of the contamination to the roaster room.
“The company is in the process of making changes to prevent future contamination,” he says. “They’re gutting the room—new walls, new floors—and fixing other things that need to be addressed.”
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While I’m not an apologist for the salmonella contamination I sure hope the rebuilding is happening fast, real fast because this is harvest time not to mention all the people in that remote Southeast New Mexico community that totally depend on the plant, farmers etc. I think while we all want to eradicate the salmonella we don’t want the same for the people living in Portales. NM. It may be that a total shutdown was required, but I wonder about the inspection process itself and the inspector for that area. Why wasn’t this seen in the off season by and inspector when the work could have been done in a slow time? If the whole Roaster room has to be rebuilt including the floor and walls, it’s common sense that no samples were ever taken of the room where it mattered. They must have found it everywhere in there. I would be interested in a little more in-depth story on the inspection process itself. How did this happen, if the plant was indeed ever inspected. I would like to know where they found it. How they do the tests and results. Want were the sample results for this shutdown.
41 people got sick out of how many exposed?
My guess you could go to any peanut butter plant anywhere and find salmonella. It is normal for it to be there. It is a part of the process of growing. The hope is to reduce the infected, but there are always going to be people coming down with salmonella. As long as the sun rises and sets. They say it got tracked back to New Mexico, how does that work? When they tested other plants, what did they find? Or did they not test other plants? This is South New Mexico, clear skies and sun, and some trucks had uncovered loads?
I learned about a few other Salmonella outbreaks in peanut butter while researching my book “Creamy and Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food,” published this week by Columbia University Press. The most notorious is the Peanut Corporation of America case of 2008-09, which killed nine people (that we know of) and sickened more than 700.
Smuckers recalled Smuckers Natural in the fall of 2011 out of concern about possible Salmonella contamination, but there were no reported injuries. And there was a little-known case of Salmonella contamination of Swift’s Peter Pan plant in Chicago in the early 1970′s, for which no injury statistics are available.
Although food safety lagged under the industry-friendly George W. Bush administration, the Peanut Corporation of America case finally stirred legislators to action (“What’s more sacred than peanut butter?” Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa thundered). In early 2011, President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act. It has not been fully implemented, however, and the Obama administration needs to be pushed on this.
I gave Sunland raw Valencia peanuts for Christmas last year and they were later included as part of the recall. Nobody had a problem. From the tenor of this article the sale of raw peanuts may be restricted. I hope not. I enjoy the raw, un-roasted, and unsalted nuts and will buy them at next opportunity.