The Wright County Egg Farm in Galt, Iowa, announced a voluntary recall of 228 million eggs after they were linked to cases of salmonella poisoning around the country.

Nearly 300 cases of illness in California, Minnesota and Colorado have all been linked to the dangerous strain of salmonella, and health officials are now looking for links between the people infected by salmonella poisoning.

The eggs that are believed to be tainted were sold with 13 brand names: Lucerne, Albertson, Mountain Dairy, Ralph's, Boomsma's, Sunshine, Hillandale, Trafficanda, Farm Fresh, Shoreland, Lund, Dutch Farms and Kemp.

The egg cartons were packaged between May 16 and August 13 and stamped with one of three codes: P-1026, P-1413 or P-1946.

Consumers who believe they may have recalled eggs should return them to the store for a full refund, said the company.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that the number of people sickened as a result of the salmonella outbreak could be in the thousands. During June and July, about 200 cases of the salmonella strain were reported weekly, four times normal levels.

"We're seeing a large increase in the number of cases of a particular type of Salmonella," said Dr. Chris Braden, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC. "It's pretty much blanketed the nation as far as we know."

The strain in question, Salmonella enteritidis, is particularly pernicious because it can affect the inside of an egg. The ovaries of a hen can be contaminated by the bacteria, passing the contaminant along to the whites and yoke of an egg as well as outside the shell, Braden said.

"The birds themselves aren't sick. The farmer doesn't even know what's going on. And in the meantime, it's producing eggs that look clean and fine," Braden said.

The federal government says its investigation into the source of the outbreak is ongoing, and while eggs are a prime suspect in many cases, other foods could also be involved. Officials have also not yet determined how salmonella got into the Iowa farm.

Woman Files Suit Over Outbreak at Wisconsin Restaurant

Already, one lawsuit has been filed in connection with an outbreak at a Kenosha, Wis. restaurant. A customer says she contracted Salmonella enteritidis there, and she's filed suit against both Wright County Egg and the restaurant, Baker Street Restaurant and Pub in Kenosha.

"Exactly how the salmonella came into the restaurant and whether there were cross-contamination issues in the restaurant or failing to cook within the restaurant, all of that is going to have to be worked out," said Bill Marler, the woman's Seattle-based attorney.

Outbreaks Across the Country Linked to Tainted Eggs

In northern California, officials noticed that dozens of people became sick after eating a certain kind of custard pie. In the southern part of the state, 12 people became ill after attending a catered event.

"It was traced back to the eggs they had consumed," said Dr. Angelo Bellomo of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. "At the same time we were doing this, similar incidents were being discovered in other parts of the country."

Egg Recall Latest in Line of Products Tainted by Salmonella Outbreaks

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is still investigating the Iowa farm to try to find the source of contamination, though.

"Wright County Egg is fully cooperating with FDA's investigation by undertaking this voluntary recall," the company said in a statement. "Our primary concern is keeping salmonella out of the food supply and away from consumers."

Symptoms of salmonella-related illness could begin as many as three days after eating the eggs, and include fever, cramps and diarrhea, according to ABC News senior health and medical editor Dr. Richard Besser. Cooking eggs thoroughly greatly reduces the risk of salmonella poisoning.

Salmonella contamination was among the leading causes of foodborne disease outbreaks in 2007, with poultry, beef and leafy greens among the most common foods involved, according to the CDC.

Salmonella outbreaks accounted for 142 of the bacterial outbreaks in 2007, including two of the three largest, according to a report from CDC researchers in the Aug. 13 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The outbreaks included 802 illnesses traced to tainted hummus, and 401 illnesses from frozen pot pies.

Rodents in food packaging and distribution facilities are the most common source of salmonella contamination. ]]>

On July 30, the Cabot, Ark., man died in his sleep at age 63.

His widow, Pat Waddle, believes the rare and virulent form of E. coli he contracted from that meal sapped much of the life from him.

"He never totally got back to who he was," she said.

A construction worker, Waddle stood 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighed 200 pounds. He was a strong man who always needed to be doing something.

"He never got back to being strong again. Both emotionally and physically, it took its toll," his widow said. "He just couldn't make it two more years."

Waddle was among 341 people who were sickened two years ago in the largest U.S. outbreak of E. coli 0111 ever. Chad Ingle, 26, of Pryor died, and more than 70 people were hospitalized.

State epidemiologists tracked the source of the rare bacteria to Country Cottage Restaurant in Locust Grove, a popular eating establishment and tourist destination in northeastern Oklahoma. There, chicken-fried steak and catfish were served buffet-style, and it was known throughout the region for its tasty food.

"It was just a nightmare," recalls Royal Dunn, who nearly died from the deadly bacteria.

The West Siloam Springs man spent seven weeks in the hospital, ringing up $489,000 in medical bills. His health insurance paid most of it, but he still had to pay a substantial amount.

Dunn, 65, ate at the restaurant, then drove two days to California to visit his daughter. He was there when he fell ill. Unconscious for three weeks, his kidneys, liver and digestive system shut down, and his family was told he would die.

"Doctors told my family they were looking at just hours," he said.

But he didn't die.

Today, Dunn has returned to his job as camp host at Natural Falls State Park in West Siloam Springs. But he still suffers the effects of his illness.

"I still don't have my strength back. And if you see me late in the day staggering, I'm not drunk. I lost a lot of my motor movements," he said.

Big hit

The town of Locust Grove took a big economic hit when Country Cottage, the town's primary draw, closed down for nearly three months after the outbreak of foodborne illness, Locust Grove Mayor Shawn Bates said.

"It's hard to overstate the importance of that restaurant," he said at the time. "It brought people into town by the carload, the vanload, even by the busload."

While there, those people also filled vehicles with gas and shopped at local stores, bringing in much-needed sales tax revenues.

When Country Cottage went down, other restaurants in town lost customers too as fear gripped the area. Notorious problems with the town's water system fueled ideas the deadly bacteria may have come from the community's water.

When it was discovered Country Cottage used its private well for two hours during the period the bacteria was transmitted, the state Health Department saw that as a distinct possibility.

Extensive testing of that well and other private wells throughout the area showed there was E. coli present but not the rare strain that had killed Ingle and sickened hundreds of others.

In April 2009, the state Health Department released the final report of its nine-month investigation. Epidemiologists concluded Country Cottage was the source of the bacteria but, as in many foodborne illness cases, they never determined how the pathogen entered the restaurant and spread to customers.

Lawsuits ongoing

About 30 former Country Cottage customers who fell ill have filed lawsuits against the restaurant, according to William Marler, a Seattle attorney who specializes in foodborne illness litigation.

His firm, Marler Clark, represents 14 clients who were sickened in the outbreak. He said his 14 clients alone racked up $2 million in medical costs. All the lawsuits - including Cynthia Ingle's, who filed a wrongful death action on behalf of her husband, Chad - have been consolidated into one action in U.S. District Court, he said.

"We're litigating with the insurance companies over how much coverage the restaurant actually has. Is it $3 million or $4 million," Marler said.

"How the money gets distributed is still left for another day."

He expects a ruling sometime after Sept. 1. His firm is providing its services pro bono and is asking each individual's health insurer to waive reimbursement.

"There is no way people can be fairly compensated," Marler said. "It's a horrible tragedy what these people went through."

Back to normal

Two years later, life goes on in Locust Grove, Bates said.

"We're stronger than we were. But I hate that we had to go through that," he said. "There are families I know who were sick and they've gotten back to some normalcy."

Country Cottage has tried to get back to normal, too. It reopened three months after the outbreak began. The restaurant now offers family-style meal service instead of its traditional buffet.

By Bates' account, the restaurant is gradually regaining customers.

"It's not the same as before," he said.

The restaurant's owners, Dale and Linda Moore, have never spoken publicly about the outbreak. But many who know them say they were emotionally devastated by what happened.

Telephone calls to the Moore family for comment weren't returned.

"Locust Grove is the same Locust Grove. We just had to face some adversity," Bates said.

"We haven't forgotten. But we've had to move on and put that behind us."

Outbreak statistics at a glance

Source of outbreak: Country Cottage Restaurant, Locust Grove

Outbreak organism: E. coli 0111:NM

Vehicle of contamination: Unknown

Method of spread: Foodborne transmission

Confirmed outbreak period: Aug. 15-24, 2008

Cases: 341

Hospitalizations: 70

Deaths: 1

People interviewed: 1,823

Time devoted to investigation: 6,481 hours (as of 3/16/09)

Source: Oklahoma State Department of Health's Final Report on E. coli 0111 Outbreak

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said victims were made ill with two rare strains of salmonella over a period of time ranging from April 1 to July 19. So far, illnesses have not been reported in California.

Last week, federal health officials tied the illnesses to food eaten “at a Mexican-style fast food restaurant chain.”

On Monday, CDC spokeswoman Lola Russell said her agency “can’t confirm” the restaurant under investigation. However, state health officials in Washington and Oregon, where cases have erupted, said Taco Bell restaurants are tied to the food scare.

“Some [tainted] food went to Taco Bell and other places,” said William Keene, senior epidemiologist with Oregon Public Health Division, to the Register on Monday.

In fact, roughly 70 percent of the victims interviewed said they “ate at Taco Bell,” said Keene, who has been part of numerous conference calls with state and federal health officials about the salmonella probe.

In response to being named in the outbreak, Taco Bell’s Chief Quality Assurance Officer Anna Ohki sent this statement to the Register:

“We take food safety very seriously and our food is perfectly safe to eat, so our customers have absolutely no cause for concern.”

On Friday, foodborne illness attorney Bill Marler filed a lawsuit against Taco Bell on behalf of a Kentucky client who was hospitalized for four days. Kentucky, which has reported 28 victims so far, was among the worst states hit by the two-strain outbreak.

Marler said other clients, not named in the suit, have also confirmed eating at Taco Bell.

“We’ve been tracking [these strains] for three or four months,” Marler said in a phone interview Monday. “We looked at the common denominator. It was pretty clear it was Taco Bell.”

Taco Bell declined to comment further about the outbreak and the lawsuit.

This is the third time in 10 years that the Mexican fast-food chain has been tied to a major national food scare. The most damaging to its reputation came in 2006, when 71 people were sickened after eating at Taco Bell restaurants in the East Coast. (Timeline of Taco Bell food events)

While it is clear that most victims ate at Taco Bell, Keene said the chain is not totally to blame.

The CDC has not linked the outbreak to one specific food. However, Keene said it was more than likely “lettuce or tomatoes” that arrived at restaurants already tainted. That supply chain is under investigation.

As produce outbreaks continue across the nation, food safety advocates have pushed for better oversight. Compared to beef, produce is inspected far less at the federal level.

“Produce is a recognized problem, [especially for chains] that buy huge volumes of produce,” said Keene. “I hope they are working with suppliers to reduce risk.”

After several produce scares in 2006, California growers created a “leafy green” pact that calls for better oversight of local produce. As a result, audits at the field and processing plant level have increased significantly in the state. ]]>

Anita Fowler of Griffith, Ind. attended a relative’s wedding reception at the Di Nolfo facility at 9425 W. 191 St. in Mokena on July 17, according to a release from her lawyers.

The next day she began to experience food poisoning symptoms including abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fever and chills, the release said.

When her symptoms worsened over the next several days, she had to seek medical attention for severe dehydration and other medical problems resulting from her infection. She continues to recover from her illness, the release said.

A lawsuit was filed on Tuesday against Di Nolfo’s Banquet Inn and Catering Service, alleging food poisoning. The law firms Marler Clark and Newland, Newland, and Newland filed the lawsuit on behalf of Fowler, the release said.

Drew Falkenstein, a lawyer with Marler Clark, which specializes in representing victims of food poisoning, said, "there are quite a few people" who have reported becoming ill after attending this wedding reception. "At this point," Falkenstein said, Marler Clark is representing "between five and 10" of these people, and more will likely follow.

Falkenstein said there has not been any one food that can be pinpointed as a source of the food poisoning at the reception. "There were a variety of foods that were served" at the reception, and he noted that in his experience with such cases, the source of the food poisoning isn't limited to just one food source.

The Will County Health Department was notified and is investigating the claims, as well. Health Department spokesman Vic Reato said, "we are investigating," but he had no details on any developments so far, since "we are in the very preliminary stages of ... what is likely to be an ongoing investigation." ]]>

Tanja Dzinovic was among the nearly 30 people who got sick in mid- June, including several who reported their illnesses after eating at Baker Street Restaurant & Pub, 6208 Green Bay Road.

The restaurant owners were not available for comment Friday.

According to the lawsuit, Dzinovic and her boyfriend ate at the restaurant on June 17. By June 21, Dzinovic was sick. Her symptoms worsened, until she finally went to a hospital June 24.

Tests confirmed she was infected with salmonella enteritidis, the same strain local health officials have since found in 28 other people from the Kenosha County area.

The lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in Kenosha County Circuit Court, seeks damages for medical bills and pain and suffering.

Attorney Drew Falkenstein acknowledged the suit couldn’t completely make up for Dzinovic’s ordeal, particularly since she might still develop long-term gastrointestinal problems as a result of her food poisoning.

“Can any lawsuit make anybody whole? It’s the best system we’ve got. It’s the only system we’ve got,” said Falkenstein, an attorney with the Seattle-based firm Marler Clark, which specializes in representing victims of foodborne illnesses.

Restaurant not only source

Not all the people who got sick had eaten at Baker Street, said Diane Bosovich, assistant director of nursing for the Kenosha County Division of Health.

Investigators could not tell how many of the 28 people who had confirmed salmonella got sick because of food at the restaurant, Bosovich said. But, she said, enough of them had a connection to the pub to make it a focus of investigation.

Health inspectors still have not been able to track the outbreak’s source. And, Bosovich said, they might never be able to, which is not so unusual given that no food was available for testing and the bacterial infection has not been tracked to any person.

All Baker Street employees tested negative for salmonella, and the restaurant has since reopened.

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The illness hospitalized at least 26 people and sickened 103.

Four men who own 31 of the area's Subways said they and their employees are suffering financially in the wake of media reports that sometimes fail to point out the measures they've taken to protect the public.

"People need to know it's safe at Subway," said Verne Evans, 72, a Chatham resident and co-owner of 18 Subways in the area.

The Illinois Department of Public Health's investigation of the case continues, spokeswoman Melaney Arnold said last week. The department reported the outbreak June 3.

The state hasn't ruled out the possibility that Subway employees spread the illness; a handful have tested positive for the unusual salmonella strain in the outbreak. The outbreak has been linked almost exclusively to Subway stores in Illinois.

Arnold said investigators are focusing on produce as a potential culprit, though she said a cause isn't known and may never be determined.

Subway cooperative

A total of 103 people - 101 Illinois residents and two people from outside the state - reported becoming ill and testing positive for the salmonella strain. Those testing positive, including 12 from Sangamon County, ranged in age from 10 days (the infant probably contracted the illness from an adult) to 80 years old.

Twenty-six people, including two from Sangamon County, were hospitalized, but all have recovered, Arnold said.

The statistics may not reflect all the illnesses, she said, noting that federal health officials estimate there can be 38 cases of salmonella for every confirmed case.

Eating food contaminated with animal feces normally transmits salmonella.

At least one lawsuit has been filed against Subway in connection with the outbreak; a Bolingbrook woman claims she got sick after eating a sandwich from a Subway in Will County on May 12.

Arnold said Subway officials have cooperated with the investigation. They voluntarily discarded all produce - lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers and red onions - suspected to be connected with illnesses.

The affected people ate at 49 Subway locations in 28 Illinois counties and one Subway in Minnesota.The 28 counties include Cass, Christian, Macon, McLean, Peoria, Sangamon (four restaurants), Schuyler, Tazewell and Winnebago.

Subway employees, most paid slightly above minimum wage, have seen their hours cut an average of 20 percent to 30 percent by managers who couldn't justify maintaining staffing levels amid the decline in sales, Evans said.

Mark Burris, 58, a Glenarm resident and Evans' business partner, said some employees have told managers that they can't make their rent payments with reduced paychecks.

Arnold said: "We're not trying to damage or hurt Subway's business. Our goal is not to disparage Subway in any way, shape or form. Our business is public health."

'Safest place to eat'

With all the scrutiny from state and local health departments and corporate Subway officials, Subways in Illinois are "probably the safest place to eat in America," said DeWayne Collins, 47, a Riverton resident who owns six area Subways.

Many people eat at Subways, Evans said, so it's not surprising that health investigators have found meals at a Subway between May 5 and June 4 to be a common thread among people who got have tested positive for Hvittingfoss salmonella.

"We kind of figure we're a victim of our own success," Collins said.

The latest positive salmonella tests came in Tuesday, but the dates that those people ate at Subway haven't changed, Arnold said.

Collins said corporate officials from the Connecticut-based chain have told local owners that revenues are down between 30 percent to 50 percent in Peoria, Champaign-Urbana and other areas where media coverage of the outbreak has been extensive.

The outbreak couldn't have come at a worse time - right before summer, traditionally the busiest time of the year for Subways, the local owners said.

Lingering concern among the public is understandable but not warranted, said Springfield resident Mike Orlando, 55, who owns seven Subways.

"Nobody wants to take their family someplace they can get sick," he said.

Workers always wear gloves while they prepare sandwiches in front of the public, and Subways have built a loyal, trusting base of customers, Burris said.

However, fears generated by the outbreak broke customers' habits of regularly visiting Subways near their home or workplace, Orlando said.

"Now we have to win them back," he said.

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The lawsuit filed by a Bolingbrook resident accuses Subway of failing to prevent the outbreak. The Illinois Department of Public Health is investigating and keeping a tally of illnesses, which as of Tuesday totaled 97 people who got sick after eating at Subway restaurants in 28 counties between May 5 and June 4.

"If it was just me and I got ill because my body just didn't agree with it, I could live with that," [the plaintiff] said Tuesday. "To know that it was because of someone else not washing their hands, or handling the food wrong," was what swayed her to contact a lawyer, she said.

Subway has apologized to customers and is cooperating in the state's investigation. The chain also removed ingredients in question and has been using new, fresh produce.

The suit, filed Monday in Will County Circuit Court, said [the plaintiff] became ill after she ate the sandwich May 12. The lawsuit was filed against the Aurora store where she bought the sandwich and Subway's parent company, Milford, Conn.-based Doctor's Associates Inc.

The suit doesn't specify a dollar amount in damages.

Subway spokesman Kevin Kane said the company doesn't comment on pending legal matters.

[The plaintiff] said she was treated for dehydration, pain and nausea at a local hospital after eating her usual Subway order: a tuna sandwich with lettuce, tomato and green pepper.

Her attorney, Drew Falkenstein, said many more people may have been sickened in the outbreak but because they never sought medical help, they haven't been counted.

"Many people stay home and just try to get through their illness on their own, and never know that they have salmonella or that they are part of an outbreak," Falkenstein said in a statement.

Symptoms of illness caused by salmonella bacteria include diarrhea, vomiting, fever or stomach cramps. ]]>

U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank approved the settlement Tuesday. Terms of the settlement are confidential.

Stephanie Smith of Cold Spring became ill in 2007 after eating a patty produced by Cargill Meat Solutions Corp., a Wichita, Kans.-based unit of Minnetonka-based Cargill Inc. Her E. coli infection led to kidney failure. She went into seizures and was kept in a medically induced coma for three months.

Smith and Cargill announced the settlement last month, saying it would provide for Smith's care throughout her life.

The former children's dance instructor was left paralyzed, with cognitive problems and kidney damage. ]]>

Marler Clark, which represented Rocori graduate Stephanie Smith in an E. coli case against Cargill, donated the money to encourage and support students interested in science, especially in food safety and the treatment of food-borne disease, attorney Bill Marler said.

The donation will endow an annual scholarship of $1,250 to $1,500, Marler said. His firm occasionally donates to similar causes, and the partners in the firm have set up scholarships like the one at Rocori at their high schools, Marler said.

Marler represented Smith when she became ill after eating a hamburger tainted with E. coli. Smith nearly died after contracting the disease in 2007 and later sued Cargill.

Marler said that Smith was aware of the donation, although she has been focused on her recovery.

“She’s got a long way to go, cognitively and physically,” Marler said of Smith. “She’s more focused on learning how to walk again.”

The case against Cargill has since settled, and a court hearing scheduled for today in St. Paul is intended for a federal judge to review and approve the terms of the settlement.

Marler represents numerous plaintiffs in food-borne illness cases across the country. He also has lobbied Congress for a food-safety bill to provide more money for the Food and Drug Administration to inspect and improve the safety of the nation’s food supply. ]]>

Angela Malos is facing on-going health problems from getting e-coli poisoning that her family believes she got at the fair's petting zoo.

Angela Malos was just two-years-old when her parents brought her to the fair ... weeks later the child was barely alive. She suffered kidney failure and several strokes. Her family said they are relieved the legal battle is over, but Angela still has lingering health problems.

A trip to the Big Fresno Fair in October of 2005 has been unforgettable for a Fresno family for all the wrong reasons. The petting zoo is the place the parents of Angela Malos believe she got a severe strain of e-coli.

John Malos, Angela's father said, "I feel guilty every single day of the week that I did take her to the fair. And I've apologized to her. And she looks at me and she says that's ok papa, it's ok."

Angela Malos was awarded 2.2-million dollars ... 2.15-millon from the fair, and an additional 50-thousand from Port O Sans, that's the company that supplied the hand washing stations.

Outside court, the attorney representing the fair denied any responsibility.

Sontaya asked, "Is the Big Fresno Fair admitting liability through this settlement?"

James Weakley said, "No, no there's no admission of liability."

Warren Paboojian, Angela Malos' Attorney said, "They paid 2.15-million dollars, they can say what they want. She got the e-coli bacteria at the Fresno Fair and that's why they are paying 2.15-million dollars."

Attorneys would not say if the fair board wanted to settle the case or take it to trial ... but another party involved decided it was time the lawsuit was brought to a close.

"The insurance carriers for the fair decided it was in their best interest to settle the case," said Weakley.

Malos says his daughter is still not back to normal ... Angela has suffered long term effects from the bacteria. She requires additional care, even when she's in school.

"She's fine mentally but she still has some medical issues with her kidneys. She has eyesight problems, she's legally blind in one eye, and she wears glasses. She has an aide in school, first grade. Constant aide because of the gate issues, she can't control her body movements," said Malos.

The money will be put into an annuity until Angela becomes an adult. At that point, she will receive payments that will cover any continued care along with compensation.

Several other children reported getting sick after visiting the petting zoo, but Angela's injuries were the most severe. Each case is being handled separately.

The Great American Petting Zoo was also listed in the lawsuit; they have yet to reach any settlement because their insurance company has denied coverage. A judge will have to hear that matter as well.

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Officials believe infected seeds, sold nationwide, are the source of the outbreak. The warning does not include bean and other types of sprouts.

There have been 31 cases of salmonella saintpaul in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, and West Virginia linked to alfalfa sprouts since mid-March, FDA says. No deaths have been reported. The current outbreak appears to be an extension of an outbreak that sickened more than 100 in February and March in Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, and Minnesota, officials say.

Raw sprouts have been linked to several outbreaks of salmonella over the past two decades, FDA says.

Salmonella can cause diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps and usually lasts four to seven days. It is especially dangerous to the elderly, infantsand people with impaired immune systems. ]]>

By that night, the 7-year-old was violently ill with diarrhea and vomiting his parents initially thought was the flu.

It wasn't until the sickness wouldn't pass that the truth was discovered.

"It never occurred to us that it was food poisoning," said Gabrielle Meunier, Christopher's mother. "I was all very, very strange and mysterious."

The Meuniers' story is like hundreds of others, all victims of a salmonella outbreak that claimed at least nine lives and spread illness across the country linked to products processed by the Peanut Corporation of America.

Gabrille Meunier took her story to Congress in February, but now she's taking it to court where she said she hopes Peanut Corp. and owner Stewart Parnell will be held accountable for her son's pain.

Investigations by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found both Peanut Corp.'s Blakely, Ga., facility and their subsidiary plant in Plainview were contaminated with the same strain of salmonella known to have caused the outbreak.

The company, which has since filed for bankruptcy protection, surrendered a $12 million insurance policy to the court to be used to settle the legal battle that is to come.

Meunier's attorney, William Marler, came to Plainview Wednesday to examine the West Texas facility as he prepares to represent more than 100 clients wishing to file suit.

A veteran of foodborne illness cases, Marler said after touring the plant he believes the Blakely facility was likely the source of the salmonella contamination later brought to Plainview.

"Even though it's not optimal conditions in here, it's clear that this wasn't the source of the outbreak," he said, adding signs of insect and rodent infestation were still evident in the Plainview plant.

Responsible for one of the largest food recalls in American history, executives at Peanut Corp. have been accused of knowingly shipping out tainted products to save money regardless of the health consequences.

A report from the Texas Department of Health Services found products marked as contaminated were placed in the same area within the Plainview plant as products ready to ship.

With such evidence on their side, Marler said he doesn't believe it will be difficult to prove that his clients deserve payment for the suffering endured.

"It had no defenses, it had no excuses, and it's why the insurance company handed over this money and said 'here, leave me alone,'" he said. "It's, unfortunately, not as rare as you'd like it to be."

Food distributors like Kellogg's also could be found liable in the cases because processing of the raw products were carried out in their facilities.

Calls to the Peanut Corp. and the Plainview plant have not been returned since February.

Meunier said she'll continue to fight for better food safety in the U.S. as long as outbreaks like the one that sickened her son are happening.

Along with salmonella, Christopher also contracted another bacteria affecting his health that his mother believes may be connected.

Though they may win their day in court, Meunier said she doesn't expect her story to have a happy ending.

"My son and my husband and I will live with this probably as long as we are blessed with Christopher's time here on earth," she said. "We don't know what this is going to mean long term. We went through hell and we don't know what this is going to mean for our son in the future."

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State inspectors had found dead rodents in the plant in Plainview shortly after it closed Feb. 9.

Attorney Bill Marler toured the plant Wednesday with several experts, mainly looking at the structure of the plant. A lawyer for the company, which has filed for bankruptcy, didn’t immediately return a call Wednesday.

Marler will tour the company’s plant Thursday in Blakely, Ga., which was at the heart of the salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds and was linked to the deaths of at least nine people.

Peanut Corp. was fined $14.6 million earlier this month by Texas regulators. ]]>

Clifford Tousignant, 78, originally of Duluth, died Jan. 12 in a Brainerd nursing home.

Although health officials said underlying health problems made it difficult to say whether salmonella was directly responsible for his death, a Minneapolis law firm filed suit against the company that makes King Nut peanut butter.

The suit, against Kanan Enterprises, was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.

Hundreds of people were sickened and a handful died nationwide during the outbreak.

Last winter's salmonella investigation focused on peanut butter distributed to food suppliers in seven states by the King Nut company and nationally by the Peanut Corp. of America, of Lynchburg, Va. ]]>

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment shut down the Kinikin Corner Dairy LLC on April 7 after 12 Western Slope residents were sickened by campylobacter. At least 10 of those people reported drinking raw milk, with eight of them getting milk from Kinikin.

On Tuesday, the state informed the dairy operator it must conduct laboratory testing of milk collected at the dairy that shows raw milk is negative for campylobacter, E. coli and fecal coliform. Lab tests must also show that raw milk is negative for antibiotics, meets acceptable standards for total coliform and conforms to Kinikin’s standards for acceptable levels of somatic cell and standard plate counts.

The dairy must also conduct follow-up sampling for the next two weeks to show the raw milk is free of contamination.

Kinikin cannot resume distribution of milk until it meets all of those conditions.

State health officials emphasized that although the dairy may reopen after passing the testing criteria, the department can’t certify the milk as safe to drink.

“The department cannot ensure the safety of milk that is not pasteurized,” said Ned Calonge, the state’s chief medical officer.

The state is contacting approximately 200 people who are participants in the dairy’s cow-share operation. Those participants buy a share of a cow and receive raw milk in return.

Consumers with raw milk or raw milk products from Kinikin are advised to throw them out.

Colorado health officials are working with Montrose County Health and Human Services officials on the investigation of the outbreak. ]]>

With the warning, the administration signaled that it was substantially changing the way the government oversees food safety. Food-handling practices that in the past would have resulted in mild warnings may now lead to wide-ranging and expensive recalls, even before anyone becomes ill from contaminated food.

“The food industry needs to be on notice that F.D.A. is going to be much more proactive and move things far faster,” said Dr. David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods at the Food and Drug Administration. “We’re going to try to stop people from getting sick in the first place, as opposed to waiting until we have illness and death before we take action.”

Last week, the agency told consumers to avoid eating pistachios — the first time it had issued such a blanket warning in the absence of reports that anyone had been sickened. And in recent days, when tests of the processing plant of Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella, based in Terra Bella, Calif., found salmonella contamination and an inspection revealed troubling gaps in sanitary measures, agency officials urged the company to recall its entire 2008 crop, increasing tenfold the recall announced last week. The F.D.A. does not have the power to recall foods itself.

The recall announced on Monday includes all of Setton’s roasted in-shell and shelled pistachios harvested in 2008, as well as any raw shelled pistachios that were not roasted before retail sale.

That most likely means that hundreds of pistachio-containing food products, like trail mix and nutty chocolate bars, will be recalled in the coming weeks.

Agency officials said in interviews that Dr. Joshua Sharfstein — the administration’s choice to lead the agency while Dr. Margaret Hamburg goes through the confirmation process to become commissioner — sought to avoid the agency’s cautious, step-by-step actions in the recent peanut recall. More than a month passed between the initial recall of a few lots of peanut butter and a decision to recall years of production from the Georgia and Texas plants of the Peanut Corporation of America.

Agency officials have long been reluctant to seek broad food recalls unless contamination has been proved, and such gradually expanding recalls have been a common feature of F.D.A. food actions for decades. Last week, Dr. Sharfstein told agency officials to act boldly far earlier, officials said.

Dr. Sharfstein speeded the agency’s decision making by getting as many as 40 agency officials to talk to one another in weekend conference calls. Dr. Sharfstein “wanted to drive it hard and drive it fast,” Dr. Acheson said.

The pistachio contamination scare began March 24 when Kraft Foods told the F.D.A. that it had repeatedly found salmonella contamination in pistachios shipped to the company by Setton. Kraft either destroyed the contaminated shipments or refused to accept them.

Setton’s own tests had found salmonella contamination on at least 18 occasions since September, Dr. Acheson said. With each positive test, the company sent contaminated lots of roasted pistachios back through its roaster and tested the lots again to ensure that the organism had been killed. But the repeated problems with salmonella “raised a lot of questions of what was happening with the 2008 crop and how this had happened,” Dr. Acheson said.

A joint inspection of Setton’s plant by the F.D.A. and the California Department of Public Health found that Setton employees often used the same transport bins, conveyors and packing machines for both raw and roasted pistachios, potentially contaminating the roasted nuts.

And two of 200 environmental tests of the facility found salmonella contamination, suggesting that some corner of Setton’s plant nurtured a salmonella colony that could contaminate every nut in the plant, wrote Donald Zink, a microbiologist and senior food scientist at the F.D.A.

The company has a safety processing plan for pistachios, but its purpose is to prevent metal shavings from contaminating the product, not salmonella, an agency official said.

The many problems led the agency to conclude that Setton could not guarantee the safety of its product, said Dr. Steven M. Solomon, the assistant commissioner for compliance policy at the F.D.A, so it pressed the company to recall its entire 2008 crop.

The agency’s tougher stance was praised by consumer advocates who have long called for the F.D.A. to act before consumers become ill.

“We want the F.D.A. to stop being remedial,” said Carol L. Tucker-Foreman, a food safety expert at the Consumer Federation of America.

Ms. Tucker-Foreman said legislation that would give the agency greater powers and require industry to undertake more preventive controls was still needed. Several proposals to bolster the agency’s oversight of food safety are circulating on Capitol Hill.

In another first, the agency put on its Web site a link to an industry-created list of pistachio products that are not affected by Setton’s recall. The link is part of the agency’s increased efforts to provide needed information directly to consumers. The agency instructed consumers not to eat pistachios or products containing pistachios until they determine whether the product was recalled by Setton.

The F.D.A. also sent a letter Friday to other pistachio producers reminding them to guard against salmonella contamination and promising inspections to ensure compliance. ]]>

Shortly after pistachios bound for its Back to Nature trail mix tested positive for salmonella, Kraft voluntarily recalled the product and informed the Food and Drug Administration. Earlier this week, regulators urged consumers to avoid eating pistachio-based products, the latest in a series of salmonella scares.

The FDA also said that Kraft's pistachio supplier, California-based Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella Inc., the nation's second-largest pistachio processor, was voluntarily recalling its 2008 crop. A batch of Setton's pistachios had tested positive for salmonella at Skokie-based Georgia Nut Co., which makes Back to Nature trail mix for Northfield-based Kraft.

That wasn't the first time Georgia Nut had discovered a positive salmonella test in conjunction with Back to Nature mix. In September, November and February, trail mix containing pistachios tested positive for salmonella, said Laurie Guzzinati, a Kraft spokeswoman.

Kraft recovered the potentially tainted trail mix before it got onto grocery store shelves, so no recall was warranted, she said. In March, another positive salmonella test cropped up in a Back to Nature product that's not yet available in stores, Guzzinati said.

Georgia Nut and Kraft weren't able to determine what caused the positive salmonella readings. The Back to Nature products contained several ingredients, but pistachios—supplied by Setton—were a common ingredient, Guzzinati said.

Setton officials couldn't be reached for comment Friday.

After the fourth positive salmonella test in a finished Back to Nature product, Georgia Nut examined 78 boxes of roasted Setton pistachios in inventory, and two tested positive for salmonella, Guzzinati said.

At that point, Kraft and Georgia Nut said they notified the FDA, and Kraft said it sent its auditors to Setton's California operation. On March 25, after finishing its audit, Kraft initiated a voluntary recall.

Kraft auditors found instances where raw and roasted pistachios weren't adequately segregated. Roasting kills salmonella bacteria. ]]>

Salmonella in nuts from Setton Pistachio was detected by one of the company's food-manufacturing customers. When the Food and Drug Administration asked Setton officials if any of their own tests had come back positive for salmonella, the answer was yes, says David Acheson, FDA associate commissioner.

"They told us, 'We've had montevideo, newport, senftenberg and larochelle,'" Acheson says, meaning the earlier discovery of four strains of salmonella.

"The question is, 'Did Setton Farms have an ongoing problem, and what did they do about it?' " Acheson says.

The FDA believes batches of pistachios that tested positive for salmonella were destroyed, not distributed. Setton Pistachio spokeswoman Fabia D'Arienzo could not confirm that.

No illnesses tied to the contamination have been confirmed, the FDA says. The agency is currently checking four salmonella cultures provided by Setton to see if they match bacteria in people who have become ill.

"If I'm getting a positive (result) and a couple of months later another positive, and then another, I would think the appropriate response would be to say, 'This is not right. I've got to figure this out,' " says Linda Harris, an expert on salmonella in nuts at the University of California-Davis.

That doesn't necessarily mean the plant has to be shut down and all the workers put out of work, she says. But, "You certainly want to stop and do a complete clean and sanitize."

Perhaps because pistachios have always been considered at low risk for bacterial contamination, Setton officials "were not paying close attention," says Michael Hansen of the advocacy group Consumers Union. And without stronger federal regulations on food safety, there was no reason for them to, he says.

The salmonella problem came to light when Georgia Nut of Skokie, Ill., did its own routine testing and found salmonella in Setton pistachios it had purchased, Kraft spokeswoman Susan Davison says.

Georgia made trail mix for Kraft Foods, and immediately told the food giant of the finding. On March 23, they together informed the FDA, Davison says. That same day Kraft sent an internal food-safety auditing team to the Terra Bella plant, she says.

"They saw the potential for cross-contamination" between raw and processed pistachios, Davison says. "For example, often in companies different colored gloves are used for the raw area and the roasted area." However at the Setton plant, the same colored gloves were used in both areas. Roasting is considered the "kill step" for salmonella. ]]>

Hours before federal regulators publicly announced a massive recall of the nuts, public health agencies nationwide were alerted to be on the lookout for suspicious stomach illnesses in a bid to get a jump on a potential outbreak.

The rarely used tactic - announcing a recall before illnesses strike - was meant to put the U.S. Food and Drug Administration "ahead of the curve," said the agency's commissioner for foods, Dr. David Acheson.

Outside of two reports of gastrointestinal illness, there has been no wave of sickenings linked to pistachios reported. That contrasts markedly with the peanut salmonella contamination, linked to nine deaths and poisonings in almost 700 other people.

Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella, Calif., began voluntarily pulling its products from distribution centers and retail shelves Monday night. The company is an affiliate of Setton International Foods Inc., in Commack.

The problem with its pistachios was caught during internal tests performed by Georgia Nut Co., which buys nuts from Setton to make Back to Nature Nantucket Blend trail mix under contract with Kraft Foods International. Georgia Nut was doing routine testing, Kraft spokeswoman Adrienne Dimopoulos said. The company notified Kraft it had identified four different strains of salmonella in the nuts. Kraft then called the FDA on March 24 to say it was voluntarily recalling the trail mix.

The FDA, after discussions with Georgia Nut, identified Setton as the processor and began investigating, Acheson said. California health officials sent investigators to review records, production practices and collect samples for laboratory analysis. Results are not yet known.

Bill Marler, an attorney with 15 years experience litigating food-borne illnesses, said "it was fortuitous that Kraft was conducting testing. They deserve credit for blowing the whistle."

A more aggressive, proactive response to contamination helps change the notion that the embattled FDA merely reacts to a contamination after consumers start falling ill, experts say.

"Actually it's not that new," Dr. Peter Pitts, a former associate commissioner of the FDA said of the front-footed approach. "It is an infrequently used approach. And it is infrequently used because of the FDA's historic dearth of funding," added Pitts, now president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest in Manhattan.

Public health experts also applauded the aggressive stance. "I am pleasantly surprised seeing them take such a comprehensive, proactive approach. To do this kind of a warning is challenging," Dr. Humayun Chaudhry, Suffolk County Health Commissioner, said of the FDA.

Chaudry's public health staff checked their owned data, phoned local hospitals and found no new reports of salmonella poisoning. The Wadsworth Center Laboratory in Albany also reported no new salmonella-related cases statewide.

Acheson credited Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, FDA's incoming deputy commissioner, with the tougher stance on contamination. Sharfstein hopes to reinvigorate the agency's watchdog role.

A Setton spokesman Tuesday pointed to possible cross-contamination between roasted and raw pistachios as the cause of the problem.

Pitts stressed the pistachio recall was very different from the peanut contamination, an outbreak he said was caused "by criminals and involved criminal activity. The pistachio recall involves a company that wants to do the right thing. These are completely different scenarios," he said.

Salmonella contamination is not growing in scope, experts say. The bacteria are part of the natural world. "It's a reflection of an industrialized food supply," said Dr. Martin Blaser, of the department of medicine at NYU Medical Center and a former salmonella surveillance officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We have twentieth century and twenty-first century modes of distribution . . . but nineteenth century modes of food safety."

Long Island merchants and customers showed little anxiety Tuesday about the voluntary pistachio recall, with plenty of roasted pistachios available at area stores.

Danny Alario, manager of a Commack Waldbaum's, said by noontime he had not received word from the company headquarters about the voluntary recall.

But there was at least one resident who is taking the voluntary recall to heart on Tuesday.

"My husband eats pistachios every single day," said Joan Simon, 62, retired and from Dix Hills, as she loaded her car with shopping bags outside the Commack Waldbaum's. "I'm going to tell him to stay away from them." ]]>

Stephen Beumler said he became ill after eating alfalfa sprouts March 1. Days later, his doctor confirmed he had been infected with the salmonella St. Paul strain.

He is suing CW Sprouts, Inc., whose SunSprout products were linked by health officials to the outbreak in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Colorado and South Dakota.

Seattle food safety law firm Marler Clark and Omaha's Ausman Law Firm filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Douglas County District Court.

The Omaha company has defended its products.

When reached Tuesday, a company spokesman who hadn't yet seen the lawsuit declined to comment. ]]>

Two million pounds of pistachios that have been distributed nationwide were recalled Monday, the Food and Drug Administration announced Monday night.

Concerns about bacteria-tainted pistachios surfaced when Kraft Foods tested them as part of routine analysis and "found a variety of different types of salmonella."

The FDA has announced the recall in advance of any confirmed illnesses. There have been some consumer complaints, but that doesn't mean definitively that the pistachios caused the illnesses.

"The good news is that the government is acting in advance of any illnesses, this means that in fact they are being more proactive to protect the public," Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told ABC News today.

The bad pistachios are believed to be coming from the second largest pistachio producer in the country, Setton International Foods, Inc. in Terra Bella, Calif. The FDA and the California Department of Health have been inspecting and investigating the facility for the past few days.

The company packs the nuts in large volume -- about 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of pistachios in each container -- and ships them to some three dozen suppliers and wholesalers that then repack or resell them to many other manufacturers under different brand names.

One of those companies was Kroger, which announced it has recalled pistachios in 31 states. Kroger operates stores under different names, including Kroger, Ralphs and Dillons.

For that reason, it could take weeks, or even longer, to determine where all the pistachios ended up. They are used as ingredients in baked goods, and in trail mix and ice cream. So for now, the FDA has urged consumers to forgo this kind of nut entirely.

That is of obvious concern to California's Western Pistachio Association.

"We just hope the FDA comes out very quickly with a more refined statement about which pistachios to avoid because the vast majority of the pistachios are not tainted," the association's executive director Richard Matoian told ABC station KFSN.

"This is really the first day of what may be a very large recall when you consider all the products that could potentially contain these contaminated pistachios," DeWaal said.

Pistachio Recall Unrelated to Peanut Recall

The pistachio announcement came on the same day that the new acting commissioner of the FDA started his job. In taking the reins of the agency, Josh Sharfstein meets food safety challenges coming at him from several different directions.

For months, consumers have been warned to stay away from certain types of peanuts and shop for alternatives as salmonella spreads across the country. As a result of those problems, peanut sales have plummeted, and lawmakers have stepped in to examine why companies didn't catch the problem before it became an outbreak. The peanut company at the heart of the recall has since filed for bankruptcy.

Peanut recalls continue to pour in eight months after illnesses first surfaced.

In recent years, food safety concerns have also steered shoppers away from buying tomatoes, salsa and spinach. President Obama has vowed to overhaul the food safety system while in office.

On Monday, the FDA made clear that the pistachio recall is unrelated to the ongoing salmonella problems in peanuts.

FDA officials also said all pistachio products were from the same 2008 crop year.

"The fact that a customer of the company found the problem is a sign that at least somebody's watching," DeWaal said. "But consumers certainly wish that the government had a more robust system so they could identify these problems before they even leave the plant."

A full list of recalled products, including Kraft Back to Nature Nantucket Blend Trail Mix and Kroger's Private Selection Shelled Pistachios, can be found on the FDA's web site.

Symptoms of salmonella include fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and stomach pain.

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Food safety officials are looking through Setton Farms' plant in rural Tulare County to see if it could lead them to the source of the contamination.

The recalls began last Friday when the Georgia Nut Company recalled its Kraft Back to Nature Nantucket Blend trail mix after some samples tested positive for salmonella. Setton Farms has started a separate recall of roasted pistachios, and grocery operator Kroger also has recalled some pistachio products.

No illnesses have been reported.

The California Department of Public Health said Monday it was tracking nuts processed at Setton Farms, a firm whose Web site describes it as the second-largest pistachio processor in the United States.

State authorities said Setton sent its roasted pistachios to Georgia Nut. Setton Farms has initiated a separate recall of three lots of roasted pistachios tied to the positive results in the trail mix, California officials said.

Kroger said the California firm also supplied the line of pistachios it recalled because of possible salmonella contamination. Those nuts were sold in 31 states.

Setton Farms did not immediately respond to calls for comment.

Dr. David Acheson, director of food safety for the Food and Drug Administration said the contaminated pistachios are not related to a recent outbreak of salmonella tied to peanuts, reports CBS News Correspondent Nancy Cordes.

The one million pound recall figure could grow as the company tracks its products, Cordes reports, and it will likely extend to all manner of pistachio products.

Right now, the FDA is advising Americans not to eat pistachios but not to throw away their pistachios either. Basically, people should hold on to their pistachios until the FDA knows more about which products are affected.

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But one culprit behind the largest food-borne illness outbreak in recent history may have been above the plant, not inside it, food safety experts say.

Peanut Corp. spent $60,000 on roof repairs in August 2008, according to testimony at a recent bankruptcy hearing.

“I suspect it was so bad that it was raining in there,” said attorney Ron Simon, who coaxed the testimony about the roof repairs from Grey Adams, the bookkeeper for Peanut Corp., who also is the daughter of company CEO Stewart Parnell. “They had to fix it.”

Simon represents several salmonella victims — including one in Georgia — that were sickened by products traced to Peanut Corp.

The leaky roof is suspect because there’s one thing needed most for salmonella to grow, spread and thrive: Water.

Experts theorize that when it rained, water could have entered the plant and multiplied any existing salmonella or even introduced the salmonella into the plant.

“That is a likely culprit for the problem,” said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at the watchdog group Consumers Union.

Rainwater, with salmonella-laced bird droppings from the roof, could have fallen on peanut products, he said. Bird and rodent droppings are common sources of salmonella.

Rainwater containing salmonella also could have landed on machinery. That machinery could have contaminated many peanut products down the line, he said, especially since both federal and state inspections cited problems with cleaning at the plant.

The roof did leak profusely, said Anne Bristow, a former plant sanitation worker. She said workers moved products around to keep water from dousing them overnight.

“I don’t mean a leak here and a leak there,” she said. “I mean it rained in there.”

Michael Doyle, director of the University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety, said water can create a dangerous situation.

“Allowing water to get into a dry [processing] environment would be like putting gas on a fire,” Doyle said.

Roof issues were noted at the plant in Blakely, Ga., as long ago as February 2007, when a state inspection report recorded the existence of a leak in the roof over a cooler.

The salmonella outbreak traced to the Blakely plant has sickened more than 600 people and has been linked to nine deaths. Almost 4,000 products have been recalled.

Water from a leaky roof may have played a role in a previous outbreak of food-borne illness at a ConAgra peanut butter plant in Sylvester, Ga. That salmonella outbreak sickened more than 400 people nationwide in 2006-2007 and was linked to a faulty sprinkler system and roof leak that developed after an August 2006 rainstorm, ConAgra officials said.

“Two years ago, everybody knew better than to have a leaky roof,” but that didn’t change anything at Peanut Corp., said Simon, the attorney. “We need to get these companies to stop doing the same damn things over and over again.”

Officials are still investigating how the salmonella got into the plant and contaminated the products. The plant is considered the primary source of the current salmonella outbreak.

Even after the repairs had been made to the roof, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in January documented water stains and streaks, as well as a gap in the roof about two feet long and a half-inch wide.

Georgia’s assistant agriculture commissioner for consumer protection on Tuesday acknowledged that rainwater leaks could pose serious problems.

“Anytime you’ve got rain from a flat surface that collects contaminants — anytime that falls on food product — you’ve got risk,” said Oscar Garrison, the assistant commissioner.

Federal officials are also eyeing other potential sources — the peanut shellers who operate away from the Peanut Corp. plant, and even the farms that produced the peanuts.

“It’s never just one thing,” said longtime food-borne illness attorney Bill Marler, who represents about 85 plaintiffs who were sickened or killed by products linked to Peanut Corp. “What normally happens is that a whole bunch of small things come together to cause an event that poisons people.” ]]>

Manufacturers "should obtain product only from suppliers with a validated process in place to adequately reduce the presence of salmonella," says the FDA. And a manufacturer that nevertheless somehow ends up buying a batch of poisoned peanuts needs "a process of its own to reduce the presence of Salmonella."

So, don't buy poisoned products. But if you do, make sure you remove the poison before selling the products to the public. Check.

Bill Marler, the ubiquitous tainted-food lawyer and blogger, added a bit of snark to the Google News page linking to a Reuters article about the guidelines. "Right at the beginning," he wrote, "the FDA explains why the guidance document has no real meaning." He's referring to the FDA's advisory that such documents "do not establish enforceable responsibilities."

"Boy, that sure is helpful," Marler observed.

The FDA didn't mention rodents or their droppings, though some of the agency's inspectors were reportedly "disgusted" when they learned last month that the Texas plant owned by Peanut Corporation of America—the company whose Georgia plant was the source of the salmonella outbreak—was rife with both. Dead mice and droppings were found all over the plant.

The death toll of the outbreak is up to 677. So far, more than 2,800 products have been pulled from shelves.

Jarred peanut butter has never been implicated in the outbreak, but sales are still way down, despite Herculean marketing efforts by the likes of J.M. Smucker (which makes Jif), Unilever (Skippy), and ConAgra (Peter Pan).

Sales were down 13.3 percent in the four weeks ending Feb. 21 compared with the same period last year, according to Nielsen.

Meanwhile, the FDA is asking the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the Agriculture Department, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for help in devising ways to speed up the detection of outbreaks of foodborne diseases.

In the two worst recent outbreaks—peanut butter and, last summer, salmonella-tainted peppers—investigators, as usual, fumbled about for weeks trying to find the source of the problem.

The goal is to reduce the length of such investigations to a few days. The other agencies, according to the FDA, have indicated a willingness to help. According to the AP, Homeland Security "has responsibility for combatting bioterrorism." And "the Pentagon is skilled at evaluating all kinds of technology." ]]>

Approximately 50 cases in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri and South Dakota have been linked to the outbreak as federal and state officials await the results of laboratory tests that could confirm whether the cause was sprouts.

CIDRAP officials at the University of Minnesota said the rare Salmonella SaintPaul subtype is the same as in last year's outbreak that involved jalapeno and Serrano peppers, but the genetic fingerprint is different.

SunSprout Enterprises Inc. of Omaha voluntarily recalled its alfalfa, onion and gourmet sprouts with "best if sold by" dates from of March 2-14 after the initial outbreak was unofficially linked to sprouts. ]]>

In the lawsuit, attorney William Marler of the Seattle firm Marler Clark contends that both Billie Rector and his daughter, Payton, were hospitalized with severe intestinal illness in January, after eating Austin brand peanut butter crackers made by Kellogg.

Both of them have since recovered, according to the family.

The lawsuit says they had purchased the crackers in the previous month and had eaten some of them before Kellogg issued what the company called a "precautionary hold" on the Austin brand crackers on Jan. 14, 2009.

Kellogg's announcement was issued after Food and Drug Administration investigators traced a nationwide salmonella outbreak to Peanut Corp. of America, a company that supplied peanut ingredients used in some Kellogg products.

"The defendant Kellogg was negligent in the selection of its food suppliers, or other subcontractors, and failed to adequately supervise them, or provide them with adequate standards ... and as a result, purchased and used products that were contaminated with salmonella," the lawsuit says.

The suit seeks unspecified financial damages due to medical expenses, physical and emotional distress, and possible future medical problems.

More than 600 people in 44 states have been identified as likely victims of salmonella infection traced to the peanut ingredients from Peanut Corp. of America, which had been used in a variety of foods.

The Marler Clark firm specializes in cases involving food-borne illness. ]]>

Lynchburg-based Peanut Corp. of America filed documents listing nearly $11.4 million in assets and debts of $4.8 million Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy court. However, more than $7 million listed as assets was in insurance that covers the company's products and will not be used for claims by consumers. Among the uses for that money would be compensating businesses that had bought Peanut Corp. products that were recalled, trustee Roy V. Creasy said.

However, the consumers who filed lawsuits aren't necessarily out of luck, said a Seattle lawyer who has filed several suits against Peanut Corp. Attorney Bill Marler said he expects his 85 clients to be paid through the company's personal injury insurance policy, which is separate from the assets tied to the product insurance.

Hartford Casualty Insurance Co. has asked for a ruling on whether its $12 million personal injury coverage of Peanut Corp. includes salmonella claims. Hartford has argued that Peanut Corp.'s actions may have negated its insurance coverage.

Peanut Corp. filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy last month amid growing fallout from the outbreak, which was sickened more than 650 people, may have caused nine deaths, and led to one of the largest product recalls in U.S. history.

The Food and Drug Administration has said that more than 2,670 peanut products have been recalled.

Companies file Chapter 7 to liquidate their assets and distribute the proceeds to creditors.

The filing Friday by attorney Andrew S. Goldstein listed more than a dozen lawsuits against the company related to the outbreak. It also listed more than 475 businesses with claims against the company.

Marler said he expects claims on behalf of those who were sickened to be paid.

"The personal injury cases will not be shunted aside," he said.

Marler is hopeful that a mediation process can be worked out to compensate individuals, but said even then the insurance money may not be enough to cover all the losses.

Marler and other food safety lawyers have also lawsuits against Solon, Ohio-based King Nut Co. and Battle Creek, Mich.-based Kellogg Co., which they say used the tainted ingredients in their products. Marler also has sued Peanut Corp.'s president, Stewart Parnell.

The only real estate that Peanut Corp. listed in the court documents was its plant in Blakely, Ga., identified by the FDA as the source of most of the illnesses. Inspectors there found roaches, mold and a leaking roof.

The plant was valued at $2 million, with a $1 million lien. The company also listed $2 million worth of equipment at the plant.

Salmonella also was found in products from Peanut Corp.'s Plainview, Texas, plant. It and a leased Suffolk, Va., blanching operation were listed as having unknown values.

The company reported about $19.7 million in gross income for the fiscal year that ended last Sept. 30.

The FBI is conducting a criminal investigation of the company, and Peanut Corp.'s statement of financial affairs included a $100,000 payment for corporate criminal legal representation.

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The Iowa Department of Public Health said 15 Iowans had confirmed or suspected infections from the bacteria. The Nebraska health department said 30 residents there had confirmed or suspected cases. A few hospitalizations have been reported, although most people have recovered at home.

The outbreak began last week, and investigators suspect it was linked to alfalfa sprouts grown by an Omaha company, CW Sprouts. Investigators were trying to determine if the contamination happened at the plant or somewhere else in the supply chain.

The company has voluntarily recalled alfalfa sprouts, onion sprouts and gourmet sprouts, which were sold under the brand name SunSprouts. The products were mostly sold in 4-ounce plastic containers, and they were distributed to grocery stores and restaurants in Nebraska and Iowa. Alfalfa sprouts also were sold in larger packages to restaurants.

Iowa officials have suggested that people avoid all such sprouts until the exact cause of the outbreak has been determined.

Salmonella bacteria can cause serious infections, especially in young children, the elderly or people in frail health. Symptoms can include fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. In rare cases, the bacteria can cause infections through the blood. People who think they might have the illness are urged to call their doctors.

The outbreak is not believed to be related to a nationwide salmonella scare involving peanut butter.

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The peanut company, though, knew in advance that Mr. Hatfield was coming. He had less than a day to check the entire plant, which processed several million pounds of peanuts a month.

Mr. Hatfield, 66, an expert in fresh produce, was not aware that peanuts were readily susceptible to salmonella poisoning — which he was not required to test for anyway. And while Mr. Hatfield was inspecting the plant on behalf of Kellogg and other food companies, the Peanut Corporation was paying him for his efforts.

“The overall food safety level of this facility was considered to be: SUPERIOR,” he concluded in his March 27, 2008, report for his employer, the American Institute of Baking, which performs audits for major food companies. A copy of the audit was obtained by The New York Times.

Federal investigators later discovered that the dilapidated plant was ravaged by salmonella and had been shipping tainted peanuts and paste for at least nine months. But they were too late to prevent what has become one of the nation’s worst known outbreaks of food-borne disease in recent years, in which nine are believed to have died and an estimated 22,500 were sickened.

With government inspectors overwhelmed by the task of guarding the nation’s food supply, the job of monitoring food plants has in large part fallen to an army of private auditors like Mr. Hatfield. And the problems go well beyond peanuts.

An examination of the largest food poisoning outbreaks in recent years — in products as varied as spinach, pet food, and a children’s snack, Veggie Booty — show that auditors failed to detect problems at plants whose contaminated products later sickened consumers.

In one case involving hamburgers fed to schoolchildren, the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company in California passed 17 separate audits in 2007, records show. Then an undercover video made that year showed the plant’s workers using forklifts to force sickly cows into the slaughterhouse, which prompted a recall of 143 million pounds of beef in February 2008.

“The contributions of third-party audits to food safety is the same as the contribution of mail-order diploma mills to education,” said Mansour Samadpour, a Seattle consultant who has worked with companies nationwide to improve food safety.

Audits are not required by the government, but food companies are increasingly requiring suppliers to undergo them as a way to ensure safety and minimize liability. The rigor of audits varies widely and many companies choose the cheapest ones, which cost as little as $1,000, in contrast to the $8,000 the Food and Drug Administration spends to inspect a plant. Typically, the private auditors inspect only manufacturing plants, not the suppliers that feed ingredients to those facilities. Nor do they commonly test the actual food products for pathogens, even though gleaming production lines can turn out poisoned fare.

As in the Georgia peanut case, auditors are also usually paid by the food plants they inspect, which some experts said could deter them from cracking down. Yet food companies often point to an auditor’s certificate as a seal of approval.

The baking institute, which is based in Manhattan, Kan., and is also known as AIB International, says it inspected more than 10,000 food production sites in 80 countries last year. James R. Munyon, its president and chief executive, said his group’s inspections were reliable and tough, no matter who pays for them, but he declined to elaborate on specific audits.

Kellogg officials declined numerous requests to be interviewed for this article. The company has said it is reviewing its use of private audits, including those by the American Institute of Baking. Kellogg said it required the Peanut Corporation to provide it with annual audits of the Georgia facility. Kellogg has recalled more than a dozen products, including Keebler crackers and Famous Amos cookies.

The retail giant Costco, which had already limited the institute’s audits to bakery vendors, has now told suppliers to stop using the group altogether.

Both the food industry and federal officials say they are aware of the problems with third-party audits. Nonetheless, the F.D.A. has proposed expanding the role of private auditors to inspect the more than 200,000 foreign facilities that ship food to the United States. The agency has proposed a voluntary certification program that would toughen audit standards and alert federal authorities of problems — an idea that has met stiff resistance from the food industry.

Food safety advocates say that audits can play a useful role in improving sanitation and catching problems. But in case after case, the audits have failed to prevent major outbreaks.

In 2007, Keystone Foods, the Pennsylvania plant that makes Veggie Booty, received an “excellent” rating from the American Institute of Baking. But the audit did not extend to ingredient suppliers, including a New Jersey company whose imported spices from China were tainted with salmonella.

As many as 2,000 people in 19 states were sickened, according to federal estimates. The incident prompted the New York company that sells the snack, Robert’s American Gourmet, to add its own inspections and regularly test ingredients for contamination.

Even when audits do turn up problems, it is up to the discretion of food companies to fix them.

After Nebraska Beef was linked to an E. coli outbreak in 2006, officials from the United States Department of Agriculture found that the company had not carried out the recommendations of auditors who had identified numerous problems at the plant in the preceding months. Nebraska Beef has disputed its culpability in the outbreak, which sickened at least 17 people.

“The only thing that matters is productivity,” said Robert A. LaBudde, a food safety expert who has consulted with food companies for 30 years, adding that “you only get in trouble if someone in the media traces it back to you, and that’s rare, like a meteor strike.”

Dr. LaBudde said a sausage plant hired him five years ago to determine the species of bacillus plaguing its meat. But the owner then refused to complete the testing. “I called them ‘anthrax sausages,’ and said they could be killing older people in the state, and still they wouldn’t do it,” he said, declining to name the company.

There are more than 200 companies and numerous independent operators in private food inspection. Few have grown faster than the American Institute of Baking. In addition to the peanut factories, the organization’s 120 auditors handle clients who process meat, seafood, vegetables, spices, oils and dairy products.

The baking institute also sells educational services to food industry personnel; the Peanut Corporation of America said some of its employees attended the organization’s food safety training classes. Audits provide nearly half the income for the organization, according to tax filings and the organization’s Web site.

Mr. Munyon, the organization’s president, said its auditors were drawn from industry experts with vast experience in food safety. “AIB emphasizes the educational value of its inspection procedure to the management and employees of the facilities it provides services to,” he said.

Mr. Munyon acknowledged that auditors were allowed to solicit contracts from plants that they then audited, but said this posed no ethical issues because the auditors were on salary, not paid by commission. Mr. Hatfield first audited the Peanut Corporation plant in Georgia in 2007 after contacting the plant’s managers to solicit their business.

The American Institute of Baking’s dual role as an educator and inspector troubles some in the food industry, as does its expansion beyond baking audits. Before the salmonella outbreak, Costco had rebuffed repeated proposals by the organization to inspect all its food suppliers. “The American Institute of Baking is bakery experts,” said R. Craig Wilson, the top food safety official at Costco. “But you stick them in a peanut butter plant or in a beef plant, they are stuffed.”

Costco, Kraft Foods and Darden Restaurants are among a group of food manufacturers and other companies that use detailed plans to prevent food safety hazards. They also supplement third-party audits with their own inspections and testing of ingredients and plant surfaces for microbes.

The American Institute of Baking was not alone in missing the trouble at the Peanut Corporation plant in Blakely, Ga. State inspectors also found only minor problems, while a federal team last month uncovered a number of alarming signs, as well as testing records from the company itself that showed salmonella in its products as far back as June 2007. Federal health officials say there are now 677 officially reported cases of salmonella poisoning in the outbreak, which reflects only about 3 percent of the total number of people sickened.

But the baking institute’s private audit of the peanut plant had particular heft in assuring food makers that the processed peanuts were safe. Plant workers, in interviews with The Times, also cited the audits’ findings when asked why they did not pursue their own concerns about the plant.

Another audit of the peanut plant, by the Michigan-based NSF Cook & Thurber, raises further questions about the usefulness of private audits. That audit found nearly two dozen problems that it characterized as “minor,” but it nonetheless gave the peanut plant an overall score of 91 out of 100.

NSF officials said that for their audits, this was a low score. But the company that paid for the audit, the insurance giant American International Group, then sold the peanut company insurance to cover the costs of recalling products, according to lawyers for the Peanut Corporation.

Mr. Hatfield, who audited the peanut plant for the American Institute of Baking, referred questions to the organization, which said he “is degreed in biology” and “trained to do the job.” In auditing the Blakely plant last March, Mr. Hatfield became concerned about his ability to check the plant thoroughly and asked for more than the one day allotted, according to people familiar with the audit. The Peanut Corporation agreed to pay for the additional time, but only in future audits, according to those people.

Mr. Hatfield had checked to see that the plant had a system in place to test its products for contamination, but the audit indicated that he did not ask to see any test results for salmonella and therefore did not know the plant had found the bacteria.

“I never thought that this bacteria would survive in the peanut butter type environment,” Mr. Hatfield wrote to a food safety expert on Jan. 20, after the deadly salmonella outbreak was made public, according to a copy of his e-mail message. “What the heck is going on??” ]]>

Cases in Iowa also have been tied to the outbreak.

The U.S Food and Drug Administration is investigating the company, CW Sprouts, to determine conditions that may have led to the contaminated sprouts.

The company has stopped shipping the sprouts and is doing a voluntary recall, Dr. Joann Schaefer, Nebraska's chief medical officer, said today.

"We're just taking every precaution and we're just working in close proximity with health officials. And everything is still preliminary at this point," said Chris Wulf, a spokesman for the sprouts company.

Schaefer said the sprouts, marketed as Sunsprouts, went to restaurants and grocery stores.

She said the FDA has not determined if any of the sprouts are still available at grocery stores or still served at restaurants. The cases occurred between Feb. 2 and 23.

Schaefer said if consumers are worried about salmonella, they should avoid eating sprouts if they don't know where they came from.

In Nebraska, there were 14 lab-confirmed cases tied to the outbreak, most in Douglas County. Two people were hospitalized and there have been no deaths. There are four other probable cases and eight to 10 suspected cases.

Schaefer said the number of lab-confirmed cases could grow.

The same strain of bacteria caused all of the cases so far.

The Iowa, cases match the DNA fingerprint of those in Nebraska, said Dr. Ann Garvey of the Iowa Department of Public Health.

There are five confirmed cases in that state and four pending. One person was hospitalized but has recovered.

Nebraska had more than 200 confirmed cases of salmonella each of the past two years. Most were unrelated.

The state does get several outbreaks per year. Those cases usually can be traced to a restaurant, church potluck or some other common source.

Health officials do not believe the current cases are part of the national salmonella outbreak tied to peanut products. Those cases were caused by a different strain.

Salmonella poisoning usually stems from people eating food contaminated with animal feces, according the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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“In 15 years of litigating most of the major foodborne illness outbreaks in the U.S., the PCA case may well be the worst food-safety breach I have ever seen,” said Seattle food-borne illness attorney Bill Marler, who has filed multiple claims against Peanut Corp. in the recent outbreak.

But as federal investigators move forward, they also are aware that few food-related investigations turn into prosecutions and even fewer land anyone in jail.

In the salmonella outbreak that began last fall, nine people are believed to be dead from eating bad peanut products. More than 660 people have been sickened.

A federal criminal investigation of Peanut Corp. of America, the company federal officials have identified as the source of the salmonella, was opened on Jan. 30. The outbreak has been traced to the company’s Blakely plant, though the plant in Plainview, Texas, may have contributed to at least six illnesses in Colorado, officials in that state said.

The probe focuses on the violation of federal food “adulteration” laws, and doesn’t legally address the victims, said former Food and Drug Administration investigators and federal agents familiar with the investigation and prosecution of food-borne illness cases.

“It doesn’t matter if anybody got sick, or if anybody died,” said Benjamin England, a former investigator with the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations and a Washington attorney who runs an FDA consulting firm, FDAImports.com.

Federal officials won’t comment on the criminal investigation springing from the current salmonella outbreak. The FDA is working with the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI on the probe.

In 1996, the FDA levied a $1.5 million fine against Odwalla Inc., a California juice maker, for selling apple juice tainted with E. coli that lead to the death of a Colorado teenager. The company pleaded guilty to 16 counts of misdemeanor food adulteration.

However, in 2007, the president of Lantana, Fla.-based Atlantis Foods Inc. got 15 months after pleading guilty to a scheme to sell adulterated chicken salad and lobster dip.

Atlanta attorney and former federal prosecutor Buddy Parker said he doesn’t expect the investigation of Peanut Corp. to be either swift or narrow.

“It strikes me that they’ll use a task force approach,” said Parker. “The FDA will bring its expertise in food, the U.S. attorney’s office its expertise as a prosecuting body, and the FBI for its expertise in criminal investigations — and I think the Department of Justice in Washington will be involved.”

Parker said the investigation could be broadened to include fraud.

Former investigators said laws governing food adulteration date to the 1938 Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.

The act defines adulterated product as food that was “prepared, packed, or held under insanitary conditions whereby it may have become contaminated with filth, or whereby it may have been rendered injurious to health.”

The provision offers two types of adulteration charges — misdemeanor and felony. Intent defines the difference. A felony charge means the food was knowingly contaminated and put on the market anyway.

A misdemeanor conviction carries a maximum sentence of a $1,000 fine and one year in prison.

Should the government prove that a company knew its products were contaminated and proceeded to market them, the misdemeanor is elevated to a felony. The maximum fine for felony adulteration is $10,000. The maximum prison sentence is three years.

States where victims of tainted food were sickened or died can pursue charges such as manslaughter or negligent homicide, said former federal investigators and prosecutors. But states don’t often do that.

“In a perfect world, a state might be right in the middle of it [the investigation] right now,” said Rande Matteson, a former federal agent and chairman of the Department of Criminal Justice at Saint Leo University, in Saint Leo, Fla. “But it’s not a perfect world.”

The speed of the investigation of the Peanut Corp. is hard to determine.

“I would be shocked if they indicted before the end of the year,” said England, noting the complexity of the case, which will require scientific testimony, lab matches and evidence whether Peanut Corp. accidentally or knowingly sent bad peanut butter and other products to market, and who ultimately is responsible for that decision.

The U.S. Senate and House held hearings on the outbreak last month amid wider calls for tougher regulation of food safety by the FDA. But a change in administration may slow the process, said Atlanta defense attorney Don Samuel.

“The Obama administration may appoint a new U.S. attorney in the Middle District of Georgia,” which has jurisdiction over Blakely, said Samuel. “If they do that, they may wait until the new attorney takes over before pursing it.”

Samuel said he expected the prosecutors to pursue company owners and managers because Peanut Corp. has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation.

“At this point nobody really cares about the corporation being prosecuted,” he said. “The question is individuals and then, which individuals?”

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Three-year-old Jacob Hurley sat, wearing a big-knotted tie in an angry congressional subcommittee meeting, as his father, Peter Hurley, testified about his son's illness. Jacob was sick for 11 days with severe symptoms of salmonella infection after munching on his favorite comfort food -- peanut butter crackers.

Now Peter Hurley, a Portland policeman, and Brandy Hurley, his wife, are suing the manufacturer, Kellogg Co., for unspecified damages in one of the biggest outbreaks of food poisoning in U.S. history, with at least 666 people becoming ill so far and nine deaths.

"There's no question that eating that product is what caused him to become ill," said Bill Marler, a Seattle attorney who is representing the Hurleys.

The lawsuit, the first in Oregon in the salmonella outbreak, accuses the company of negligence, saying it failed to use ingredients that were "safe, wholesome, free of defects." It also says the company "had a duty to carefully select and monitor its suppliers" but "failed to adequately supervise them."

Kellogg, based in Michigan, said it does not comment about ongoing court cases.

Lab tests confirmed that Jacob had the same salmonella strain as in the nationwide outbreak, prompting Oregon health authorities to visit the family and test some of their leftover packages of Austin Toasty Crackers with Peanut Butter.

The crackers tested positive for salmonella typhimurium, said William Keene, senior epidemiologist with the state Public Health Division.

In mid-January, a few days after Jacob had recovered from days of diarrhea and vomiting, Kellogg recalled its Austin and Keebler-brand crackers made with peanut butter.

The popular snack foods were made with peanut paste from the Peanut Corp. of America, which is facing a criminal investigation.

Federal inspectors found salmonella at the company's Blakely, Ga., plant along with evidence that the company sold food even after it had tested positive for the bacteria. Besides the Austin crackers, peanut butter made from peanuts processed by Peanut Corp. have tested positive for salmonella.

The Oregon lawsuit, however, does not target Peanut Corp., which has filed for bankruptcy.

Marler said Kellogg bears responsibility, too.

"Big-name brands like Kellogg have an enormous responsibility to monitor where they're getting their product and how that product is being manufactured," he said. "The public doesn't know whether it's made in China or a rat-infested or bird-infested plant in Blakely, Georgia. They're buying a Kellogg product."

Peanut Corp. sold potentially tainted ingredients to dozens of companies, including distributors that resold to other manufacturers. The web of sales has swept up about 200 companies in the recall, one of the most extensive in U.S. history.

More than 2,200 items have been pulled, with fresh recall notices issued every day. Just this week, the Oregon Department of Agriculture entered the fray, asking food stores, manufacturers and distributors to pull food made with peanuts from Peanut Corp.'s plant in Plainview, Texas, after a Washington County boy, who ate bulk peanuts distributed by the plant, got sick.

That plant and Peanut Corp.'s facility in Georgia are closed.

Peanut Corp. faces more than a dozen lawsuits nationwide, and Kellogg is named in six suits, including the Hurley's.

Marler, an expert in food poisoning litigation, expects the Hurley case to go to a jury trial.

Although Jacob has recovered, his parents are trying to make a point, he said.

"For the Hurleys, like a lot of people who wind up litigating cases, it's less about what went on with their kid," Marler said. "It's more that they're upset with the system that would allow something like this to happen." ]]>

The Cook County Health Department has mandated all children and adults at the KinderCare Learning Center, 12404 Archer Ave., be tested for the bacteria. The day care center has been allowed remain open so the children have a place to go and not possibly carry the bacteria to other centers.

Three children associated with the outbreak - linked to a lack of handwashing - were hospitalized but have since been treated and released.

The remaining children carrying the bacteria are all under the age of 5. They, along with the adult, have been sent home along with anyone experiencing diarrhea until tests for the bacteria turn up negative twice within 24 hours.

A person who has no symptoms could still test positive for the bacteria, the department warned.

KinderCare has stepped up its efforts to sanitize the center, including adding enhanced cleaning, additional staff to monitor handwashing, and hiring a certified nurse.

The company is working with parents to reimburse them for certain out-of-pocket medical expenses and lost wages due to staying home with their children, said Beth Daniels, a spokeswoman for the day care.

"We've been doing everything possible to prevent the further spread of this," she said.

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That outbreak was blamed on a popular restaurant in Locust Grove where many of those sickened had eaten.

But the state attorney general later suggested it may have been caused by well water contaminated by nearby poultry farms. The poultry industry denies the claim.

The state Department of Environmental Quality said Wednesday it was unable to link the rare strain of E. coli responsible for the outbreak to the bacteria discovered in the wells. ]]>

When food goes bad, it's Chris Gindorff's job to get it off the shelf of every Lunds and Byerly's supermarket. He's the person at Lund Food Holdings Inc. who orchestrates a food recall, and when the Food and Drug Administration sent an e-mail last month about a peanut butter plant in Georgia, Gindorff took notice.

"I knew this was going to be big," he said.

What happened next was part detective novel, part military campaign, as Gindorff and a team of managers hunted down the infected peanut butter among the tens of thousands of things sold through the company's supermarkets.

The urgency of their task grew as the recall expanded to cover not just institutional-size buckets of peanut butter, but peanut products that could have ended up anywhere: on the shelves in brand-name products, in the cookies made in store bakeries or in Lunds' own packaged foods.

Behind any item in a supermarket is a web of food plants, suppliers, manufacturers. Each ingredient may have come from a separate location, or even multiple locations, mixed together somewhere else and then, finally, delivered to the store.

The arrangements that deliver food from a manufacturer to a retailer allow for much fluidity within the food chain, a benefit for most people involved. It also complicates recalls. In some moments of the Peanut Corp. of America recall, Gindorff manually typed in thousands of product codes from various foods into his office computer, searching a Lunds database of everything on its shelves.

Lunds agreed to share with the Star Tribune a behind-the-scenes account of how it responded to one of the largest and most complicated food recalls in recent memory.

It began with an e-mail.

Friday, Jan. 9

6:06 p.m.: The Minnesota Department of Health scores a hit. Its investigators, pursuing leads in a national salmonella outbreak, are the first in the country to identify King Nut brand peanut butter as the source. The department issues an e-mail alert at 6:06 p.m., identifying the 5-pound pail of King Nut peanut butter as the contaminated product. Gindorff, who subscribes to the Health Department's e-mail alerts, gets the message on his BlackBerry.

He calls three Lunds managers who are responsible for every piece of food coming into the supermarket: the store-brand manager, the senior manager for grocery and the procurement manager, the person who buys ingredients for the supermarket's bakeries.

A typical Lunds or Byerly's store carries more than 30,000 distinct products, each with its own Universal Product Code, or UPC. That's the black-and-white bar code that cashiers scan at the checkout. It's also the key for most retailers when a recall is announced; no other code works as quickly.

Using the UPC of the King Nut product, the procurement manager checks his database of store products and quickly determines they don't use anything from the 5-pound pail. The grocery manager moves quickly as well; since the 5-pound pail is an institutional product sold to food service operations, it's not carried by the retailer.

The store-brand manager has a more complicated job. She must contact each of the 44 suppliers who make the foods that end up as Lunds and Byerly's products. Some of those suppliers, in turn, must check with their sources.

Saturday, Jan. 10

9:37 a.m.: All clear. The store-brand manager hears from the last of the suppliers and tells Gindorff that none of the suppliers used peanut butter from the King Nut 5-pound pails in any Lunds and Byerly's store-brand products. Each supplier gets a 15-page document when entering into business with Lunds. The agreement stipulates that the suppliers have 24 hours, in the event of a recall, to tell Lunds whether they've received recalled items. "Sometimes we're going four layers deep through the suppliers," Gindorff said.

The recall goes quiet for a few days, but Gindorff doesn't feel like it's over yet. An ongoing FDA investigation at the Peanut Corp. of America plant and his experience with past recalls have him anxious that more news might be coming.

Sunday, Jan. 18

The FDA issues a general notice to consumers that essentially says to postpone eating peanut butter until further notice, following up three days later with a website listing all contaminated products.

Wednesday, Jan. 28

11:44 a.m.: A tip. The Food Manufacturing Institute tells members, including Lunds and Byerly's, that the recall will expand to include more Peanut Corp. products, including peanuts.

2:55 p.m.: Armed with new information on the scope of the recall, Gindorff again calls his three managers and tells them to make the same checks they made earlier, only this time include all items from the Peanut Corp. plant.

Thursday, Jan. 29

8:26 a.m.: A hit. The store-brand manager says one of the suppliers, the New Jersey company that makes the Lunds and Byerly's snack nut items, bought peanuts from the Peanut Corp. of America. The supplier sends the e-mail to Julie Griffin, the store-brand manager, Gindorff and several others at Lunds, including the produce manager, who immediately contacts stores to clear the shelves.

9:31 a.m.: All stores have workers pulling snack nut mix from the aisles.

1:43 p.m.: The company's website announces the recall of its snack mix.

4:08 p.m.: A second hit. A supplier, the Bergin Fruit and Nut Co. of St. Paul, confirms that it, too, has peanuts from the Peanut Corp. of America. Lunds sells the Bergin product in its bulk foods section. Workers pull it from the stores.

Monday, Feb. 2

As alarming as the two hits were on Thursday, Gindorff gets worse news today. "Things just busted wide open," he said. Dozens of companies, some of them major national brands, begin issuing news releases and contacting the FDA with recalled items. Some of those products are sold at Lunds and Byerly's. Gindorff, working in his office at the Lunds production facility in Eden Prairie, types in the UPC of each item as the FDA notices appear, searching a Lunds and Byerly's database of every product sold on their shelves. He issues alerts to store managers to pull more products.

Tuesday, Feb. 3

More news releases go out. Gindorff types in more UPCs. He issues more alerts, and more products are pulled. By the end of the day, the stream of new recalls slows down, though some continue to trickle in as the week wears on.

The creeping nature of the recall, with Company A announcing a recall one day and Company B announcing one the next, leaves many consumers wondering why it's so hard for companies to identify contaminated food and remove it from their shelves.

Store record-keeping is partly to blame, industry experts say. But a bigger cause is the intertwined nature of the food chain.

"It gets back to the complexity of the supply chain," said John Hanlin, vice president for food safety at Supervalu, the Eden Prairie-based retailer with 2,500 supermarkets nationwide.

A state government study in North Carolina last year surveyed 250 stores in the days after the recall of Castleberry's canned food due to botulism and found that 38 percent of stores in that state still had recalled items for sale.

Friday, Feb. 20

The Peanut Corp. of America recall eventually leads Lunds and Byerly's to pull 61 items as of Friday. The spread of salmonella has sickened 41 Minnesotans and killed three. Lunds and Byerly's receive no reports that any of their customers were among those injured. A criminal investigation at the Peanut Corp. plant indicates that charges will be filed against the plant's operators. ]]>

"Peanut Corporation of America is responsible for sickening more than 640 people and contributing to the deaths of nine," says Marler. "The victims of this outbreak can't put their bills on hold, and shouldn't be asked to."

Bryson Trone, a 3-year-old Crescent City child, ate peanut butter cracker sandwiches made with PCA's peanut butter product up to and including Christmas Day 2008. On December 26, he fell ill with fever and frequent bouts of diarrhea that turned bloody. When his symptoms worsened, he was admitted to the hospital, where he remained for five days. While hospitalized, he tested positive for the strain of Salmonella Typhimurium associated with the PCA outbreak.

The lawsuit on behalf of the Trone family was filed against PCA and the Kellogg Company in the U.S. District Court of Georgia, Middle District. The family is represented by Marler Clark and by Patrick Flynn of Georgia firm Flynn, Peeler & Phillips.

"Salmonella can be a dangerous infection for kids," says Marler, who will be in Palm Springs February 23-26 addressing the Grocery Manufacturer's Association Food Claims and Litigation Conference. "Many of our clients in this outbreak are children who were made gravely ill by foods their families trusted to be safe."

Salmonella Typhimurium illnesses were reported as early as August 2008 but were not linked to peanut butter until January 2009. They were then traced to the PCA processing plants in Blakely, Georgia, and Plainview, Texas. The now-shuttered plants provided peanut butter and peanut paste used in many products, including cookies, crackers, candies, ice cream, nutrition bars, and dog treats. Dozens of companies have recalled thousands of products, with more appearing every day. ]]>

Virginia-based Peanut Corporation of America filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection Friday.

The Plainview plant voluntarily ceased operations Monday after an independent lab in Illinois confirmed granulated peanuts and peanut meal processed here tested positive for the presence of salmonella bacteria.

State health officials issued a formal closure order and recall of everything the plant had produced after finding dead rodents, rodent feces and feathers in a crawl space above the production area Thursday.

The recall reflects Department of State Health Services officials' beliefs that plant conditions posed "an immediate and serious threat to human life or health."

The company has been at the center of an investigation linking PCA's Blakely, Ga., plant to peanut products tainted with salmonella bacteria that has caused an outbreak across 43 states, caused more than 630 people to become ill and may have played a role in nine deaths so far.

Companies filing under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code liquidate assets and distribute the proceeds to creditors, as opposed to a Chapter 11 filing that gives a company opportunity to reduce its debts and continue in business.

The Associated Press reported the PCA board considered a Chapter 11 bankruptcy but decided on an outright liquidation. It said in a court filing that the recalls had been "extremely devastating" to the company's financial condition.

The bankruptcy proceeding could be designed to postpone litigation against the company, but lawyers plan to push a judge to allow civil lawsuits to go forward anyway. And many have also filed lawsuits against Solon, Ohio-based King Nut Co. and Battle Creek, Mich.-based Kellogg Co., which they say used the tainted ingredients in their products.

Attorneys are prepared to argue that even if PCA doesn't have enough resources, including insurance and liquid assets to cover the damages, "King Nut and Kellogg will have to step up," Bill Marler, who has filed seven lawsuits against the company on behalf of more than 40 possible victims, told the AP.

In addition to the civil suits facing PCA, the government is considering criminal charges against the company's president, Stewart Parnell.

Parnell last week repeatedly refused to answer questions before the House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee, which is seeking ways to prevent another outbreak. But e-mails surfaced indicating he ordered products the company knew were tainted to be shipped anyway.

DSHS Public Information Officer Doug McBride told the Herald he was uncertain if there would be any criminal charges filed in connection with the closing of the Plainview processing plant. ]]>

The Peanut Corp. of America temporarily closed its plant in Plainview, Texas, Monday night at the request of health officials after the tests found “the possible presence of salmonella” in some of its products, the Texas Department of Health said in a statement.

The Texas plant produces peanut meal, granulated peanuts and dry roasted peanuts. Texas state health officials said that possibly contaminated peanut meal and granulated peanuts had not been sent to customers. Potentially contaminated dry roasted peanuts were shipped to a distributor, but were caught before reaching the public, state officials said.

The company is being investigated in connection with an outbreak that has sickened 600 people and may have caused at least eight deaths. More than 1,840 possibly contaminated consumer products have been recalled.

Peanut Corp. closed its plant in Blakely, Ga., last month after federal investigators identified that facility as the source of the salmonella outbreak. Company spokeswoman Amy Rotenberg did not immediately return a call seeking comment today.

The Texas closing came a day after the FBI raided the company’s plant in Georgia, hauling off boxes and other material. Agents executed search warrants at both the plant and at Peanut Corp.’s headquarters in Lynchburg, Va., according to a senior congressional aide with knowledge of the raids. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

During their investigation at the Georgia plant, Food and Drug Administration inspectors found roaches, mold, a leaking roof and other sanitation problems. They also found two strains of salmonella. Though different from the outbreak strain, the discovery of the bacteria at the plant signaled a hole in food safety.

The FDA said last week the company knowingly shipped salmonella-laced products from the Georgia plant after tests showed the products were contaminated. Federal law forbids producing or shipping foods under conditions that could make it harmful to consumers’ health.

FDA spokeswoman Susan Cruzan said the agency is still investigating the Plainview facility. It was not immediately known if the discovery would lead to broader product recalls. Cruzan said the FDA is searching records to see where products from the Plainview plant may have been distributed.

“The FDA has collected its own samples and is awaiting lab results,” Cruzan said. Initially, agency officials had indicated that the salmonella problems seemed to be limited to Peanut Corp.’s Georgia plant.

An Associated Press investigation last week revealed that the Texas plant, which opened in March 2005 and was run by a subsidiary, Plainview Peanut Co., operated uninspected and unlicensed by state health officials until after the company came under investigation last month by the Food and Drug Administration.

Doug McBride, spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, said Peanut Corp. agreed to shut the plant voluntarily as it works with the state agency.

Plainview Mayor John Anderson said today the Texas plant employed about 30 people. It was not immediately clear how they would be affected by the suspension.

“I’m just very sorry to hear that,” Plainview Mayor John Anderson said today when a reporter called with news of the suspension. “Hopefully it’s just a temporary suspension. That’d be the best of all worlds.”

The company, which also operates a small plant under the name Tidewater Blanching in Suffolk, Va., sold its peanut butter to institutional clients, such as nursing homes, and its peanut paste to many other companies that used it as an ingredient in products ranging from cookies and ice cream to energy bars and pet treats. While the company initially said its products weren’t sold directly to consumers, it said Sunday that some were sold directly to discount retailers.

Food safety attorney Bill Marler, one of several attorneys who have filed civil lawsuits against the company since the outbreak started, said it was the latest disturbing turn for Peanut Corp.

“It is clear that PCA is not a producer that companies could — or can — rely on for a safe product,” he said. ]]>

But those are mere statistics. They do nothing to communicate the anguish that a Wilsonville, Ore., family endured most of last month.

Jacob Hurley was a pretty healthy 3-year-old. But in early January, Jacob's lethargy, vomiting, cramps and bloody diarrhea were clearly more than a day care bug. His parents, Peter and Brandy, rushed him to the pediatrician.

A call from the doctor a few days later with the results of the laboratory's analysis of the child's stool sample announced Jacob had salmonella.

Peter Hurley, 40, a Portland police officer, knew that people had died from eating King Nut Peanut Butter, a product that the Peanut Corp. of America, a Georgia company, had sold in large jars and cans to hospitals, nursing homes, schools and other institutional users.

"We called Jacob's school to see if other children were sick, and none were," recalled Hurley.

The Hurleys had none of the product in their home, and the frustration of not knowing what had sickened their child was exacerbated by the debilitating symptoms that continued to weaken him. The pediatrician told Brandy Hurley she could give Jacob his favorite snack -- Austin Toasty Crackers.

If it doesn't kill a patient, salmonella usually runs its course in four to seven days. But Jacob was well beyond that and wasn't getting better.

A week after the diagnosis, the Hurleys called Oregon's Office of Disease Prevention and Epidemiology. The next night, a Saturday, Dr. William Keene, Oregon's chief epidemiologist, made a house call.

"It was like having the head of the FBI coming out to take fingerprints," Peter Hurley said.

Keene has a national reputation for a bloodhound's tenacity in searching for the source of food poisoning and, as he checked out the family's pantry, it didn't take him long to spot the Austin crackers. Keene knew what the parents didn't, that peanut butter in the Kellogg's product came from the Peanut Corp. of America.

A week later, the epidemiologist called back and told the Hurleys that three out of the six packages of crackers taken from their home tested positive for salmonella. Laboratory analysis matched the DNA of the salmonella in the crackers with what was found in the company's products, Oregon officials said.

Jacob's parents were unknowingly feeding salmonella-contaminated food to their child, whose body was already loaded with the sometimes-lethal bacteria.

It took 11 more days for Jacob's symptoms to dissipate, and today he is recovering.

But his father's anger against the peanut company continues to swell. He was shocked by reports that the Food and Drug Administration had confirmed that the Peanut Corp. of America had knowingly shipped out salmonella-tainted products 12 times in the past two years.

The dangerous web from the Georgia plant spewed to more than 1,200 companies across the nation that used some form of the peanuts in more than 1,950 items. It was almost impossible to go into a store anywhere in the country and not find potentially dangerous food on the shelves.

Yet, the FDA refused to order a mandatory recall of anything using the company's products, claiming it is unable to order a recall under its present laws. Some food-safety activists say that's a bogus claim. Nevertheless, the lengthy delay by manufacturers who have possibly used the contaminated peanut ingredients in voluntarily pulling their products off store shelves has been blamed for the spread of the poisoning.

Peter Hurley angrily questioned whether anyone in the company had a conscience and whether it was "just hoping that no one would get sick and die."

With 14 years as a cop, Hurley equated the company's action to a police officer's firing a loaded gun at someone's head, then saying, "I was hoping that the bullet in the chamber wouldn't fire."

"Both scenarios are utterly unacceptable," Hurley said.

At about the same time that the source of Jacob's illness was identified, 1,600 miles east in Brainerd, Minn., Clifford Tousignat was dying because a nursing home fed him peanut butter.

The 78-year-old winner of three Purple Hearts and the father of six, grandfather of 15 and great-grandfather of 14 suffered for weeks before his death, said his son Lou.

"My father was a good man. He fought for his country. He died because he ate peanut butter," the son said. He questions how can the U.S. lead the free world "if we can't keep our own citizens safe from the food that we eat every day?"

He and Jacob's father are scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House Oversight and Investigations subcommittee that is investigating the FDA's handling of the peanut poisonings.

Both men, who are among scores represented by Seattle food safety lawyer William Marler, will share their stories before Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Bart Stupak of Michigan. The two Democrats have previously chaired hearings on food-safety issues.

Stewart Parnell, president of the Peanut Corp. of America, and Dr. Frank Torti, acting head of the FDA, also have been called to testify.

Marler, who frequently testifies on food safety before congressional committees, submitted his suggestions for protecting the food supply.

In his lengthy list of recommendations, the highly opinionated lawyer will remind the lawmakers that there are too few legal consequences for sickening or killing customers by selling contaminated food.

"We should impose stiff fines and prison sentences for violators, and even stiffer penalties for repeat violators," Marler said.

He repeated suggestions he made last year that the three main federal agencies responsible for food safety -- the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service and the inspection arm of the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- be merged and adequately funded.

"The present system is trifurcated, which leads to turf wars and split responsibilities. We need one independent agency that deals with food-borne pathogens," he plans to tell the congressmen. "You have a moral responsibility to consumers in your hometown or anywhere U.S. goods are sold."

Meanwhile, the FDA adds to the lists of recalled products, and the FBI continues to examine boxes of documents and samples it collected in a surprise raid Monday on the Georgia plant and PCA's corporate headquarters in Virginia. The Justice Department is evaluating possible criminal charges.

The company, which had repeatedly said that "due to the nature of the ongoing investigations, we will not be able to comment further about the facts related to this matter" now says it's cooperating with government authorities.

This week it said it had shut down its operation in Plainview, Texas, until all government investigations are completed.

According to congressional staff members, the company had fewer than 90 employees in its Georgia plant yet still produced about 3 percent of the nation's processed peanuts. ]]>

When the gates opened Sunday morning to the petting zoo at the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, kids moved en masse to scratch behind the ears of everything from farm animals to wallabies.

Experts caution, though, that settings such as the Great American Petting Zoo are the perfect place to spread E. coli bacteria, which easily transfers from animals to humans and causes an unpleasant illness. A recent outbreak in Denver may be linked to the National Western Stock Show.

But many parents at the local petting zoo Sunday said they weren’t worried about germs or bacteria.

No problem, said Logan’s stepfather, Rudy Cantu: “We wash his hands.”

Tracing the origin

Hand washing is in fact key to thwarting the spread of E. coli, and the petting zoo makes it easy with a washing station right at the entrance to the critter corral.

But not all tips are so easy to observe.

Can you keep your toddler from sucking her thumb after sidling up to that llama?

“I can’t keep her in a bubble,” Cybill McGlaughlin said of her daughter Mackenzie, 2. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t keep a close eye on Mackenzie’s potential exposure to bacteria.

“My husband thinks I’m a little extreme,” she said.

“It’s definitely something I think about every day with her.”

In Denver, where as many as 20 cases of E-coli had been reported as of Friday — 12 were confirmed — officials were still trying to pinpoint whether the illnesses originated at the stock show. It was a common thread among the primary cases, said Judith Shaly, Denver’s acting public health director.

Watch for symptoms

Shaly said Friday that anyone with symptoms — including blood in the stool and a low-grade fever — should refrain from taking any medication, prescription or otherwise, and immediately see a doctor. Symptoms usually clear up on their own within a few days.

Bill Marler, a Seattle attorney who specializes in food poisoning and related cases, said the threat of exposure is so high that he wouldn’t risk taking young children or those with compromised immune systems to a petting zoo.

“It’s really a dilemma,” he said.

Marler noted that people feel nostalgic about county fairs and rodeos, but that nowadays people have to contend with bacteria that didn’t exist a few decades ago.

“I grew up going to county fairs and my sister used to take animals to county fairs,” Marler said. “But that was in the ’60s and ’70s, and it’s sad, but that was different.”

To cut down on the risk, the local petting zoo prohibits pacifiers, bottles and any food or drink from entering the animal area. ]]>

Q: What is PulseNet?

A: It's a national network of public health labs coordinated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When state and local health officials get lab results of people sick with food poisoning, they post information about cases on the WebBoard, the PulseNet listserv. State and national health officials use this information to look for patterns.

PulseNet gets its name from a lab technology called pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, which enables investigators to do DNA "fingerprinting" of the infection bacteria and its strain subtype.

It's somewhat like an FBI database that can compare fingerprints from an arrest record in California to fingerprints at the scene of a crime in Florida and determine if it's the same crook. It takes about two days to run a genetic fingerprint on a sample. Each year, PulseNet identifies more than 300 clusters of patients infected with salmonella, E. coli, shigella and listeria.

Q: How comprehensive is it?

A: This network can't catalog every case in an outbreak. Only some people who get sick go to doctors, and not all doctors run tests to confirm what infection the patient has. Health officials estimate that the actual number of illnesses in an outbreak may be 10 times higher than the lab network reports.

But by detecting an outbreak while it's still going on and then identifying the food that's spreading it, health officials believe they can prevent countless illnesses and some deaths.

Other countries have similar systems. The CDC routinely shares data with Canada, but not with other countries.

Q: How long does it take to identify a foodborne germ?

A: It generally takes two to four weeks from the time the first person in a cluster gets ill until the cluster is detected by PulseNet. In the case of the peanut butter outbreak, CDC first detected a national pattern in November, the month after substantial numbers of lab-tested illnesses first emerged.

CDC officials did not disclose the outbreak until January. They said it took more than a month for health officials to interview sick patients to determine that peanut butter was the food they all had in common. Then, a test from a peanut butter container in Minnesota found the outbreak strain of salmonella.

Q: Can't this process be sped up?

A: The PulseNet system itself is relatively rapid. But investigation timelines are driven by what patients and doctors do about illnesses, and how quickly health officials in individual states react.

"The PulseNet system is a great system. The problem is it's a 22nd century system resting on pillars of epidemiologic research that go back to the 1800s," said Bill Marler, a Seattle plaintiff's attorney who specializes in national food poisoning cases.

Such limitations may explain why Florida has had no lab-confirmed cases in the current salmonella outbreak. Unlike some other states, Florida does not require doctors and hospitals to send salmonella samples to a state lab for analysis and does not budget to handle such a workload. At least 270 samples that may be the outbreak strain have been collected, but only 25 were sent to a state lab for genetic fingerprinting.

Q: How long has this network been in place?

A: PulseNet was launched in 1996, but didn't have the participation of all states until 2002. The cost is shared by the CDC and states. CDC says it spends about $5.6 million annually, but has no figure for what states spend.

The origin of the system lies with a 1993 outbreak of E. coli food poisoning in the western United States. CDC successfully used DNA fingerprinting to nail the strain of E. coli O157:H7 that sickened hundreds and killed four children; it was traced to hamburger patties served at Jack in the Box restaurants. That's when the idea of a collaborative system among the states and federal government began to take shape. ]]>

Hartford Casualty Insurance Co., part of The Hartford Financial Services Group, is asking a federal court in Virginia to determine what its responsibility is on three years of policies it issued to Peanut Corp. of America.

The Lynchburg, Va.-based peanut processor makes peanut butter and peanut paste, which is used in baked goods and other foods.

The salmonella bacteria outbreak has sickened about 575 people nationwide, and at least eight have died. Connecticut's Department of Public Health said nine cases of illness here may be associated with Peanut Corp. products.

The Hartford could be on the hook for up to $31 million in claims under the liability insurance policies at issue if it gets only unfavorable court rulings. It might cost the insurer millions more in legal costs, depending on how the policies were written.

Rather than wait to be sued by its customer, Peanut Corp., The Hartford asked U.S. District Court for western Virginia this week for a declaratory judgment on the policy dispute.

Peanut Corp. could face hundreds of millions of dollars in claims of various kinds, said Bill Marler, a Seattle trial lawyer specializing in food-borne illness lawsuits. Only three suits had been filed by Thursday afternoon on behalf of salmonella victims — two of them by Marler — but more are expected. The peanut company will also face massive claims from businesses for the cost of food recalls and lost profits, he said.

With the company facing all that and a federal criminal investigation, "it does seem a bit like The Hartford is kicking their insured under the bus at a time when they probably need a little support," Marler said.

Insurance coverage disputes between businesses and their liability insurers often surface in court, especially in big cases such as asbestos injury claims. But Marler said insurance disputes in contaminated food cases are usually fought "behind closed doors."

The Hartford wouldn't discuss details of the peanut dispute or legal strategy. Company spokesman David Snowden would only say, "We are seeking a declaratory judgment from the court to determine the extent of our obligation to the Peanut Corp. of America under our policies of insurance. We believe this will help clarify the claims process."

The Hartford's court filing says, "An actual controversy exists between Hartford and PCA as to whether one or more of the terms, conditions, exclusions and limitations limit, exclude or nullify coverage under the policies for one or more of the salmonella claims."

A Peanut Corp. spokesperson did not return calls for comment Thursday.

The Hartford may have moved quickly into court to determine whether it will have to pay to defend Peanut Corp. against suits, said Peter Kochenburger, executive director of the University of Connecticut's Insurance Law Center. The costs of defense, which can be huge in such a case, are typically in addition to what a general liability policy promises to pay on claims, he said.

Liability policies may promise to pay a certain amount overall, but might have sublimits on certain kinds of claims, so The Hartford might want the court to iron out such issues, Kochenburger said.

Marler speculated that The Hartford may try to avoid some claims if its policies excluded intentional bad acts, though he said such exclusions are more common in professional liability policies than in general commercial liability insurance. Previous news reports have said products that initially tested positive for salmonella were shipped by Peanut Corp. after they were retested and got a negative result.

By Thursday, companies had recalled 1,313 products containing peanut products, making it one of the largest U.S. food recalls ever, The Associated Press reported. The ever-growing list of companies recalling products includes Starbucks, Hershey, Nestle, Kellogg, Walgreens, Sarah Lee and Stop & Shop. The Stew Leonard's food store chain said Thursday it recalled five trail mixes.Peanut Corp. expanded its recall Jan. 28 to all peanut products produced at its Blakely, Ga., plant since Jan. 1, 2007. ]]>

Sixteen of the 20 people infected, all children, attended the annual event in Denver, according to the doctor leading the investigation.

Dr. Chris Urbina, director of Denver Public Health, said that, in all, 19 children whose median age is 4 years old were infected.

He said that the one adult infected is 66 years old and that the youngest child is 17 months old.

"We are trying to figure out the source — whether food, water or animals," Urbina said.

Urbina said that this strain of E. coli, called 0157 H7, is fatal in about one in 50 cases. It can infect blood and kidneys and cause kidney failure.

Urbina said the illness can be spread through contact. Particularly worrisome is that children who may have contacted this particular bacteria might have returned to day-care centers or schools and spread it, Urbina said.

He said among the symptoms are abdominal pain, bloody diarrhea, low-grade fever and vomiting. He said anyone with those symptoms should see a doctor immediately.

Urbina said those who contracted this E. coli strain live up and down the Front Range and include residents of Denver, Jefferson, Adams, Arapahoe and Broomfield counties.

Urbina said he is coordinating the investigation with the Colorado health department and local health departments.

He said the National Western Stock Show is fully cooperating with the investigation.

Pat Grant, president and chief executive of the stock show, said Thursday that "we are working proactively with the state to try to determine the origin of the E. coli outbreak."

Grant said that at this point, there is not conclusive evidence that the outbreak is linked to the stock show.

He said it will be later this week or early next week before the results of tests are known.

"To my knowledge, in our 102-year history, we never had a prior instance of E. coli," Grant said.

Grant said the stock show has vigorously sought to take precautions to prevent E. coli outbreaks stemming from the interaction of people and animals at the stock show.

There are signs, he said, that ask people to wash their hands thoroughly, and there are handwashing stations near the petting farm at the show.

"The National Western is about people, animals and children," Grant said. "We want to be as open and transparent as we can be."

]]>

A lab has confirmed 20 E. coli cases but the number is expected to grow, said Chris Urbina with Denver Public Health.

The strain E. coli O157 primarily affected children on the Front Range, from Boulder to El Paso County.

"While the investigation is ongoing, we suspect that these infections are linked to attending the National Western Stock Show, which was held in Denver from Jan. 10 to Jan. 25," the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said in a news release.

Although health officials haven't pinpointed the exact cause of the E. coli, the common denominator in all the cases is the stock show, Urbina said.

The National Western Stock show had 643,100 visitors over 16 days. It was a 4.5 percent drop from last year but it's the 12th straight year that attendance has topped the 600,000 mark.

A call to the spokeswoman of National Western Stock Show has not been returned.

Many schools and child care centers organized trips to the stock show, and many children attended with their families, so there is the potential that the number of cases could jump, health officials said. CDPHE said it is working with local public health agencies to fully investigate cases as they are reported.

Part of the problem is that it takes up to eight days for E. coli to incubate and for those infected to show symptoms, and in that time, the bacteria can spread very easily from one person to another, especially among young children, Urbina said.

Several of the affected children attend child care. At least two of the children appear to have become ill from contact with other ill children and one of these illnesses was transmitted in a child care center, the CDPHE confirmed.

Health officials say E. coli infections among child care center attendees are very concerning because E. coli infections can be very serious in young children.

Urbina said this strain was particularly toxic and if the toxins aren't properly filtered by the kidney it can cause damage to the kidney. They can lead to hospitalization and in some cases a complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, which can cause kidney failure, CDPHE said.

That is why on Wednesday, the CDPHE sent a letter to daycare centers alerting them to the outbreak and asking the staff to take special precautions.

The public health notice sent to daycares is below:

At this point, the CDPHE recommends the following:

For child care centers:

o

o Report any cases of bloody diarrhea (even if there is only one) to your local public health agency or to CDPHE immediately.

o Report any increase in the number of children or staff with diarrhea who attend your facility to your local health department or to CDPHE immediately.

o Children or staff must not attend childcare while ill with diarrhea.

o If it is known that a child/staff member with diarrhea attended the stock show, or if the facility took a trip to the stock show, the child/staff member should be referred to his/her health care provider for follow up and stool testing before returning to class. That stool test must be negative and the diarrhea must have resolved before the child/staff member can return to child care.

o Any child/staff member with bloody diarrhea, regardless of whether he/she went to the stock show should be referred to his/her health care provider for follow up and stool testing before returning to class. That stool test must be negative and the diarrhea must have resolved before the child/staff member can return to child care.

o If a child/staff member has diarrhea that is not bloody and did not attend the stock show, then the child/staff member is not required to provide a negative stool specimen, however diarrhea must be resolved before returning to child care.

Children and staff who are diagnosed with E. coli O157 must have two stool specimens that are negative for E. coli O157 or shiga toxin before returning to child care.

For schools:

o

o Report any cases of bloody diarrhea (even if there is only one) to your local public health agency or to CDPHE (number below) immediately.

o Report any increase in the number of children or staff with diarrhea who attend you facility to your local health department or to CDPHE (number below) immediately.

o Children should not attend school while ill with diarrhea.

o If it is known that a child with diarrhea has attended the stock show, or if the child has bloody diarrhea, we strongly recommend the child be referred to his/her provider for follow up and stool testing.

o Because transmission of E. coli O157 from one person to another is rare in school settings, children who are diagnosed with E. coli O157 are not required to have negative stool specimens before returning to school. They should, however, be free of diarrhea before returning to class.

School staff who are diagnosed with E. coli O157 are also not required to have negative stool specimens before returning to work, unless the staff member handles food as part of his/her job.

General control measures:

o

o Regular agents that are used for sanitizing and disinfection, such as sodium hypochlorite and quaternary ammonia based solutions, are effective against E. coli. No special disinfectants are necessary to kill E. coli.

o Consider increasing cleaning frequency of sanitizing and/or disinfection, particularly in restrooms and diaper changing areas.

o Meticulous hand hygiene following diaper changing is extremely important in controlling the spread of many pathogens. Both the child’s and caregiver’s hands should be washed immediately following diaper changing and toileting.

o Handwashing is also extremely important for food handlers and before eating meals. Caregivers should supervise children during handwashing to ensure that the process is adequate.

Again, staff responsible for preparing meals in child care facilities and in schools should not handle food if they have diarrhea or have been diagnosed with E coli. Food handlers with diarrhea should not return to work until their diarrhea has resolved and should be encouraged to visit a physician to have their stool tested. Food handlers diagnosed with E coli, should not return to work until they have had two negative stool samples.

CDPHE has asked health care providers to obtain stool specimens from children presenting with bloody diarrhea.

*

* Please ensure the laboratory will test for E. coli O157 or for shiga toxin, as not all laboratories do this routinely.

* Consider obtaining stool specimens from children with non-bloody diarrhea if diarrhea has persisted for more than 2 days, or is accompanied by fever, severe abdominal cramping or other symptoms.

* Report cases of bloody diarrhea in children to CDPHE at 303-69... until further notice.

* Children should not attend child care while they have diarrhea. Children who are diagnosed with E. coli O157 must have two stool specimens that are negative for E. coli O157 or shiga toxin before returning to child care. Please explain these exclusion policies to parents of children who are ill and who attend child care.

Antibiotics are generally not recommended for E. coli O157 infection and may be associated with development of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS).

If outbreaks or ill children are identified in your facility, your local public health agency will work with you to determine if additional control measures are necessary.

Please maintain this enhanced vigilance for illness and the extra screening measures for some children with diarrhea from now to Feb. 16, 2009.

For disease reporting or other questions please contact the CDPHE Communicable Disease program at 303-692-2700. ]]>

Carolyn Hawkinson died and Ellie Wheeler became seriously ill after eating beef meatballs contaminated with E. coli bacteria at Salem Lutheran Church in Longville, Minn., in July 2006. At least 15 other people also became ill.

Attorney Bill Marler, who represented the Hawkinson and Wheeler families, said Monday the terms of the settlement are confidential.

The settlement resolves the claims against Nebraska Beef Ltd., Interstate Meat Services Inc. and Tabaka's Super Valu. All those companies were involved in producing, distributing and selling the beef involved.

Attorney Gary Gordon, who represented Omaha-based Nebraska Beef, confirmed the case had been settled but wouldn't comment on the details.

Nebraska Beef's counter lawsuit against the church was an oddity. Marler said he's never heard of a food manufacturer suing a private entity like a church, although he has seen cases where the manufacturer sued a restaurant.

Filing the claim against the church was a boneheaded legal strategy, Marler said when it was filed in October 2007.

But Gordon said at the time there were enough questions about how the church workers handled the meat that Nebraska Beef decided Salem should be part of the case.

The end of the lawsuit is a relief to the church, which maintained it did nothing wrong throughout the case, said Leatha Wolter, Salem's attorney.

"This was simply an effort by a large company to shift blame," Wolter said.

Hawkinson, 73, died in August 2006 after eating meatballs at the church event the previous month.

E. coli causes intestinal illness that generally clears up within a week for adults but can be deadly for the very young, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems. Symptoms can include severe stomach cramps, bloody diarrhea and, in extreme cases, kidney failure.

The potentially fatal bacteria are harbored in the intestines of cattle. Improper butchering and processing can cause the E. coli to get into meat. Thorough cooking, to at least 160 degrees internal temperature, can destroy the bacteria.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the E. coli 0157:H7 variant sickens about 73,000 people and kills 61 each year in the United States ]]>

The wording of the recall statement had to be approved by the company before the Food and Drug Administration could publish it under current rules. The agency relies on cooperation from food makers to ensure the safety of the food supply even when those makers are suspected of crimes.

Some Democrats in Congress have vowed to change this by giving the F.D.A. more authority, and the agency’s critics say it is too timid with the power it has.

On Monday, President Obama promised a “complete review of F.D.A. operations.”

“I think that the F.D.A. has not been able to catch some of these things as quickly as I expect them to catch,” Mr. Obama said in an interview on the “Today” show.

The president said Americans should be able to count on the government to keep children, including his daughter, Sasha, 7, safe when they eat peanut butter.

“That’s what Sasha eats for lunch probably three times a week,” Mr. Obama said. “And, you know, I don’t want to have to worry about whether she’s going to get sick as a consequence to having her lunch.”

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said Friday that Mr. Obama would soon announce a new F.D.A. commissioner and other officials. Mr. Gibbs said they would put in place a “stricter regulatory structure” to prevent breakdowns in food-safety inspections.

Part of the review is sure to examine whether the requirement for the peanut company’s approval caused delays in warnings about its products once public health officials became aware of significant problems at its plant in Blakely, Ga. The warning also covered products from the company’s customers that manufacture food, including Kellogg.

A representative for the peanut company would not comment. Kris Charles, a Kellogg spokeswoman, said “Kellogg acted quickly and recalled potentially impacted products within hours” of the peanut company’s second recall announcement.

Judy Leon, an F.D.A. spokeswoman, refused to comment.

More than 500 people have been sick in the outbreak of salmonella poisoning, and 8 have died. More than 430 product brands have been recalled.

The delays meant Sarah Kirchner of Belle Plaine, Minn., whose two young children became ill from the outbreak, for weeks had no idea how to prevent a recurrence. Her 3-year-old son, Michael, was hospitalized for four days with intense pain in his head, neck and shoulders, she said.

“He had a spinal tap, bone scan, M.R.I. and a CT scan,” Ms. Kirchner said. “I’m still so worried about him.”

Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, said she had been asking top food and drug officials for years if they needed authority for ordering mandatory recalls.

But the officials said companies cooperated when recalls were needed.

“They can’t even get a press release out on this stuff without industry approval. It’s just unbelievable,” said Ms. DeLauro, who promised to offer legislation on Wednesday that would split the agency’s food oversight into a separate entity with mandatory recall authority and other powers.

Public health officials pinpointed the Blakely plant as the source of the salmonella outbreak on Jan. 9. The peanut company announced a limited recall on Jan. 13 and expanded it on Jan. 16. The company waited until Jan. 28 before recalling all products made at the plant in 2007 and 2008, even though it had known since 2007 that tests of products showed contamination with salmonella.

Food buyers and some top public health officials say they knew before any public announcement that the company’s products and those of its customers were the likeliest source of the outbreak.

Craig Wilson, an assistant vice president at Costco, said he pulled Kellogg’s Keebler and Austin peanut butter crackers off shelves a day before Kellogg’s first announcement and nearly a week before the Peanut company and Kellogg issued a nationwide recall that covered those cookies.

Mr. Wilson said he could not wait for the F.D.A. to make announcements about food problems that are widely known among food safety officials.

“I don’t want to say that you can’t rely on the F.D.A.,” Mr. Wilson said, “but we certainly can move quicker than they do.”

The F.D.A. can seize a product that it suspects is contaminated, and it can ask a federal judge for authority to recall products if a maker refuses to do so. The agency can also announce that it suspects problems with a product before the company agrees to a recall. But it rarely does any of these.

Bill Marler, a food safety lawyer in Seattle, said the agency had neither the authority nor the courage it needed to keep the food supply safe.

Michael R. Taylor, a former top official at the food agency, said change was needed.

“F.D.A. negotiates communications about recalls with companies,” Mr. Taylor said, “and that sometimes leads to delays. Changing that dynamic when people are getting seriously ill and dying is something that ought to happen.” ]]>

Food safety watchdogs and legal experts say criminal charges have only been brought against a handful of companies involved in high-profile outbreaks though federal law allows cases to be prosecuted without proof the company knew it was distributing contaminated food. They say the law is not used often because there has been little will to pursue criminal charges in all but the most noteworthy and outrageous cases, and that has put the public at risk.

"Part of that system is the ability to penalize the people that fail," said Michael Taylor, a food safety scientist at George Washington University. "And there's been a real failure to do so at the federal and state level."

Food safety advocates hope that is starting to change.

The Food and Drug Administration said Friday it has asked the Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation into Virginia-based Peanut Corp. of America, which authorities say shipped products that initially tested positive for salmonella after retesting and getting a negative result. At least 529 people have been sickened as a result of the outbreak, and at least eight may have died because of it. More than 430 products have been recalled.

If they decide to press charges, prosecutors could use the 1938 Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act, which gave the government leeway to charge food manufacturers if they were responsible for contaminated food. The Supreme Court gave prosecutors more leverage in 1975 when it ruled they didn't have to prove the companies knew the food was contaminated.

The ruling prompted only a modest increase in prosecutions.

"There have been innumerable times they could have prosecuted but didn't," said Bill Marler, a Seattle-based food safety lawyer who has filed two lawsuits against Peanut Corp. of America over the recent outbreak. "My sad speculation, frankly, is that prosecutors in the U.S. on the Justice Department side or state side don't see poisoning people with food for profit as a crime."

The Food and Drug Administration said it doesn't track food-related prosecutions separately, but said its investigative arm logged 341 arrests and 279 convictions in 2006. Many of those involved counterfeit medicines and faulty or tampered products, which also fall under its jurisdiction.

Recent convictions include the 1996 case against juice-maker Odwalla Inc., which was fined $1.5 million on charges of shipping unpasteurized apple juice that killed a baby.

Five years later, Sara Lee Corp. was fined $200,000 after pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges of selling tainted meats in a listeria outbreak that killed 15 people.

The FDA also points to prosecutions in lower-profile cases, such as the 2007 conviction of a man who made false reports to investigators after a mix-up led to antibiotics being dumped into unpasteurized milk at a New York farm.

Although cases may not yield criminal charges, firms are often targeted with a flood of civil lawsuits seeking monetary damages. In some cases, the companies also agree to tighten testing standards and spend more money on safety measures.

A 1993 E. coli outbreak that sickened about 700 people and killed four who ate undercooked Jack in the Box hamburgers never yielded prosecutions, but did lead to tighter Agriculture Department safety standards for meat and poultry producers.

Federal charges also were never filed against ConAgra in the 2002 E. coli outbreak that prompted a massive meat recall and sickened at least 19, or the company's 2007 peanut butter recall after a salmonella outbreak spread to more than 400 people.

And prosecutors decided against pursuing charges against two produce companies involved in the 2006 tainted spinach case, saying the investigation found the growers and processors did not deliberately skirt the law.

Part of the problem, attorneys say, is that prosecutors aren't using other criminal charges to pursue cases. In the current outbreak stemming from tainted peanut butter, Georgia agricultural officials had said they would consider pursuing state manslaughter charges if federal authorities did not take up a case against the peanut processing plant in rural southwest Georgia.

"If a U.S. attorney wanted to prosecute this as a felony, there are enough statutes they could use to charge it out as a felony," said Fred Pritzker, a food safety lawyer in Minneapolis who has filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of a 72-year-old woman whose death may be linked to the current outbreak.

Eric Greenberg, a Chicago-based attorney who defends food and drug companies, said some prosecutors also may shy away from such cases because they take time and manpower for an agency that's already stretched thin.

"It's not a high hill to climb for a prosecutor," he said. "It takes a lot of time, but in terms of what they have to prove, it's not too difficult to prosecute because they don't have to prove intent."

There are signs the political will may be shifting toward more aggressive prosecution.

On Friday, President Barack Obama pledged more oversight of food safety to prevent breakdowns in inspections, and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the president plans to put in place a "stricter regulatory structure" to bolster the food safety network.

State and federal lawmakers are also considering a host of changes to food safety policy, including a measure that could require companies to submit all test results to the FDA. Federal officials say Peanut Corp. did not initially tell investigators about in-house test results that found salmonella.

A congressional hearing scheduled in February could also delve into other areas where lawmakers can stiffen penalties.

"I hope this hearing will help bring to light not only what went wrong," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who heads a congressional panel conducting its own inquiry. "But also what FDA and industry can do to prevent future outbreaks."

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The complaint was filed on behalf of Vermont residents Gabrielle and Daryl Meunier, whose 7-year-old son got sick last November with fever, vomiting and diarrhea. After being hospitalized, their son tested positive for contracting a strain of salmonella that is now linked to peanut butter made at the Peanut Corporation of America's Georgia plant. Meunier v. Peanut Corporation of America, No. 1:09-cv-00012 (M.D. Ga.).

The FDA report, which came out last month, found that the Georgia plant shipped products that had tested positive for salmonella contamination at least 12 times in the past two years. Federal investigators also found unsanitary conditions and numerous health violations at the plant. On Wednesday, the FDA asked companies and consumers to discard every product made from the plant in the past two years.

The plant produced peanut butter and peanut butter paste that was sold to companies that make cookies, cakes, ice cream and dog treats. Since last fall, at least 43 states have reported illnesses, and eight people have died.

Bill Marler, a partner at Marler Clark in Seattle, who filed the suit, said the recent FDA report indicates willful intent.

"Based on the fact that the plant was having pretty severe problems and was pretty clearly shipping product knowing it may likely be contaminated, it certainly, in my view, reaches to the level of a punitive claim," he said, especially if criminal charges are to be brought.

Stewart Parnell, president of Peanut Corporation of America, issued a statement last week stating that he "categorically denies any allegations that the company sought favorable results from any lab in order to ship its products."

He also said that during the recent FDA inspection of the Georgia plant, Peanut Corporation of America took corrective action. "PCA does not agree with all the observations noted, and there are some inaccuracies," he stated.

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The decision comes months after the start of a nationwide salmonella outbreak and weeks into a flurry of peanut-related recalls that now includes a Beaverton-based company.

The Food and Drug Administration is working with the Justice Department to prosecute Peanut Corporation of America, Stephen Sundlof, FDA's director of food safety, told reporters during a conference call.

Sundlof said a shipment of the company's peanuts that contained metal shards and was rejected by Canadian authorities was returned to the U.S. last April and then destroyed by the company in November.

They tried to clean the metal shards out but it couldn't be done, said Domenic Veneziano, director of imports at the FDA.

An investigation of Peanut Corp's plant at Blakely, Ga., turned up two different strains of salmonella and evidence that on 12 occasions in 2007 and 2008 the company knowingly sold peanut products contaminated with salmonella, sometimes after getting a negative test by a private lab.

"I do find that shocking," said June Bancroft, epidemiologist with the Public Health Division in Oregon. "These factories are not really well maintained. They're just a big warehouse."

During the news conference, Dr. Robert Tauxe of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, said his agency had received reports of 28 new cases of people sickened since last Sunday.

That includes at least one in Oregon -- a young man in Yamhill County who became ill sick Jan. 16.

At least 530 people have been sickened in 43 states and in Canada and eight deaths have been linked to the outbreak, including one in Idaho.

"It's an unusually high number of deaths for a salmonella outbreak," said Bill Marler, a Seattle lawyer and expert on food poisoning cases.

The spurt of new sicknesses nationwide comes amid a doubling of Oregon's cases this month.

William Keene, senior epidemiologist at the Public Health Division, thinks the state will continue to tally new cases while the recall continues.

More than 400 items have been pulled off the shelves, with peanut brittle, roasted peanuts and other sweets added on Friday, including Peanut Butter Cookies and Cookie Bars made by Beaverton-based Arico Natural Foods Co.

This week the recall was expanded to include all products that Peanut Corp.'s Georgia plant sold since Jan 1, 2007, including dry- and oil-roasted peanuts, granulated peanuts, peanut meal, peanut paste and peanut butter.

"It is quickly becoming one of the largest and perhaps the largest food recall in U.S. history," Marler said.

Until Friday, federal officials had said consumers could trust well-known brands of peanut butter, but during the news conference Sundlof warned against "boutique brands" sold in small stores.

"We don't have concerns about the national name brands," he said, "but we know that some stores will purchase peanuts and grind them themselves which they sell as peanut butter."

In Oregon, Austin Toasty Crackers with Peanut Butter sickened at least one person, a boy in Clackamas County, who was ill this month.

Lab tests showed that the crackers from the boy's house, which were purchased at the Costco in Tigard, were contaminated with the same strain at the heart of the outbreak -- salmonella typhimurium.

Oregon health officials are now testing the same Austin crackers from the Yamhill County home for salmonella.

Although few food poisoning cases are rarely prosecuted at the federal level, Marler believes the Justice Department will take Peanut Corp. to court.

"It's highly likely that there will be a criminal prosecution in this case," he said. ]]>

More than 500 people in 43 states have been sickened, and eight have died, after eating crackers and other products made with peanut butter from the plant, which is owned by the Peanut Corporation of America. More than 100 children under the age of 5 are among those who have been sickened.

The plant sells its peanut paste to some of the nation’s largest food manufacturers, including Kellogg and McKee Foods. As a result of the contamination, more than 100 products have been recalled, mostly cookies and crackers.

Officials from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention traced the outbreak to the Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely, Ga. On Jan. 9, investigators descended on the plant for a thorough inspection, which was completed Tuesday.

The report from the inspection, first posted on the Internet by Bill Marler, a lawyer, cites 12 instances in 2007 and 2008 in which the company’s own tests of its product found contamination by salmonella.

In each case, the report states, “after the firm retested the product and received a negative status, the product was shipped in interstate commerce.”

It is illegal for a company to continue testing a product until it gets a clean test, said Michael Taylor, a food safety expert at George Washington University.

In a press conference Tuesday, Michael Rogers, director of the division of field investigations at the F.D.A., said that the company’s tests showing salmonella contamination should have led the company to take actions to eliminate the contamination. “It’s significant, because at the point at which salmonella was identified, it shouldn’t be there, based on the manufacturing process that’s designed to mitigate salmonella, actually eliminate it,” Mr. Rogers said.

The firm took no steps to clean its plant after the test results alerted the company to the contamination, he said, and the inspection team found problems with the plant’s routine cleaning procedures as well.

The plant also stored pallets of peanut butter next to supplies of peanuts, the inspectional report says. Finished products should be stored far from raw materials to reduce the chances of re-contamination of the finished goods, according to federal rules.

The report describes a plant that was not constructed to produce safe food. “There were open gaps observed” near air-conditioner intakes that were as large as a half-inch by two and one-half feet long, the report stated. Previous inspections of the plant by the Georgia State Agriculture Department found dirty surfaces, grease residue and dirt buildup throughout the plant. They also found rust residue that could flake into food, gaps in warehouse doors large enough for rodents to enter, and numerous other problems.

A spokesman for the Peanut Corporation did not immediately return a phone message.

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Officials said the Peanut Corp. of America plant had shipped products that the company's own initial tests found to be positive for salmonella. They retested and got a negative reading.

Peanut Corp. also failed to take some standard "good manufacturing" steps to prevent contamination within the Blakely, Ga., facility. officials said. Indeed, investigators have identified four different strains of salmonella thus far.

"There is certainly a salmonella problem in the plant," said Dr. Robert Tauxe of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The latest findings renewed concerns about federal inspections of food facilities, which are few and far between. In this case, the Food and Drug Administration relied on Georgia authorities to inspect the plant. But state agricultural inspectors did not uncover what now appears to have been a festering problem.

"Inspections are worthless if companies can test and retest until they receive the results they want," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich, who heads a congressional panel conducting its own inquiry. He's introduced legislation to end such "lab shopping" and to require companies to submit all test results to the FDA. Officials said Peanut Corp. did not initially disclose the test results that found salmonella.

Meanwhile, the recall list has grown to more 390 products, from ice cream to dog biscuits. More than 500 people have gotten sick, and the outbreak may have contributed to eight deaths.

Peanut Corp. issued a terse statement on Tuesday, saying: "PCA has cooperated fully with the FDA from day one during the course of this investigation. We have shared with them every record that they have asked for that is in our possession, and we will continue to do so."

The FDA said it will post its inspection reports on the Internet on Wednesday.

A senior FDA investigator told reporters Tuesday that the company's own internal testing detected salmonella on about 12 occasions in 2007 and 2008.

"The inspection revealed that the firm's internal testing program identified salmonella," said Michael Rogers, director of FDA's division of field investigations. "In some cases ... a subsequent lab was used that reached a negative conclusion." Peanut Corp. then shipped the products.

But, said Rogers: "At the point in which salmonella was identified, it shouldn't be there."

Rogers also said Peanut Corp. did not do enough to prevent cross-contamination within the plant. Roasting is supposed to kill any salmonella in peanuts. But roasted peanuts can become re-contaminated if they are handled with equipment that's also used for raw peanuts.

Health officials said they have now identified four types of salmonella in connection with the investigation.

Salmonella Typhimurium is the strain that caused the illnesses. Two other strains were found on the floor of the facility and a third in a container of peanut butter from the plant.

Stupak, whose staff has been briefed by the FDA, said Salmonella Tennessee was found in an unopened jar of peanut butter from the plant.

Salmonella Senftenberg, as well as Salmonella Mbandaka were found on the floors of the plant.

None of the other three strains contributed to the outbreak, CDC officials said, but their presence was seen a sign of overall problems with cleanliness at the facility.

Curiously, the outbreak strain has not turned up within the plant. Nonetheless, officials said they have plenty of evidence that's where it came from. Connecticut health officials isolated Salmonella Typhimurium from an unopened container of peanut butter made at the facility. Minnesota officials found it in an open container. FDA also found it in a package of recalled crackers made with peanut paste from the plant.

Salmonella is the most common source of food poisoning in the United States. It causes diarrhea, cramping and fever. About one out of every five patients who got sick in the current outbreak had to be hospitalized. The elderly and the very young are especially vulnerable. ]]>

"Minnesota figures out most of the outbreaks in the current United States and, you know, frankly they're just a relatively small state in the scheme of things."

— Attorney Bill Marler on Minnesota's ability to track food-borne illnesses including tracing the ongoing peanut butter-linked salmonella outbreak

Listen online at The Takeaway website. ]]>

The complaint was filed on behalf of Vermont residents Gabrielle and Daryl Meunier, whose son Christopher, 7, was one of more than 485 people sickened in the outbreak that began in September, has been linked to six deaths and hospitalized more than 100 people.

It came as authorities confirmed they had traced sources of Salmonella Typhimurium contamination to a Blakely, Ga., processing plant owned by Virginia-based Peanut Corp. of America, which manufactures peanut butter and peanut paste - a concentrated product consisting of ground, roasted peanuts - that are both distributed to food manufacturers for use in many commercially produced products including cakes, cookies, crackers, candies, cereal and ice cream.

Testing of a number of products, matched with the genetic fingerprint taken from samples from those sickened by peanut butter and peanut paste, led the FDA to confirm the Georgia plant as the source of the latest outbreak. The strain of salmonella is a common fecal bacterium carried by rats and birds.

Bill Marler, a Seattle-based attorney with 15 years of experience in food safety cases whose firm Marler Clark is representing the Meuniers and 20 other people sickened in the latest outbreak, called on the incoming administration yesterday to improve surveillance of the nation's food supply. "I sincerely hope Mr. Obama will be able to effect change in our food safety agencies and policies. In the meantime, hundreds of Americans are ill, and six families are mourning. All of those families have medical bills, some have lost time at work ... Something has to be done about it."

The Meuniers' son was hospitalized for six days after becoming badly dehydrated as a result of the illness. Gabrielle Meunier told Vermont WCAX-TV she realized later the only food he had eaten that the rest of the family had not were Keebler Cheese & Peanut Butter Crackers. The family was upset the investigation had taken so long and wanted a better process that protected consumers.

While authorities began receiving reports of the illness in September, those reports were first linked to peanut butter on Jan. 9, and later traced to the PCA processing plant. On Jan. 13, the company announced a voluntary recall of some products, which it expanded Sunday.

Companies that purchased peanut butter or peanut paste from the plant continued recalling products yesterday. One of the first to announce its recall - last week - was Kellogg's, whose Keebler brand peanut butter cracker sandwiches had sickened the Meuniers' son Nov. 25.

Also yesterday, a Connecticut school district e-mailed parents to notify them that its schools had removed peanut butter and peanut butter products from cafeterias and vending machines.

Health authorities on Long Island say there have been no new cases since the three reported two weeks ago. All - two in Suffolk and one in Nassau - were minors. However, Grace Kelly McGovern, spokeswoman for the Suffolk County Health Department, said local and state health officials probably will never have an accurate tally because most people affected by salmonella self-treat the infection and do not see a physician.

Among latest recalls

Abbott Nutrition's ZonePerfect Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars and NutriPals Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars in the U.S., Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore.

Clif Bar & Company's CLIF and LUNA branded bars containing peanut butter.

PetSmart: seven Grreat Choice Dog Biscuit products that contain PCA peanut paste.

Nature's Path Organic Foods of Richmond, British Columbia, Canada: Optimum Energy Bars Peanut Butter flavor.

Supermarket chain Wegmans ice cream containing peanut butter is being pulled from shelves.

FDA ADVICE

If consumers can't determine if their peanut butter/peanut paste-containing products or institutionally served peanut butter contain PCA peanut butter/peanut paste, do not consume them.

Efforts to specifically identify products subject to the PCA recall are continuing.

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Gabrielle Meunier, 48, also said she is suing Peanut Corp. of America. The federal Food and Drug Administration has traced the salmonella outbreak to a PCA plant in Georgia.

Christopher Meunier, 7, was hospitalized for six days about seven weeks ago, his mother said. The boy is back in school but hasn’t fully recovered, Meunier said. He still has occasional bouts with stomach pains, arthritis-like pains elsewhere on his body and bloody stools, she said.

Close to 500 people across the nation, including four Vermonters, have been infected with a strain of salmonella tied to the peanut butter, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The infections might have contributed to six deaths, federal health officials said.

Meunier said the lack of information left her mystified and fearful that what she had in her cupboards could make her family sick. “What in the world could we have eaten that nobody else has eaten?” she wondered. She said health officials knew as early as Jan. 13 that Keebler Cheese & Peanut Butter Sandwich crackers were the likely cause of her son’s illness, but she didn’t learn until two days later the crackers were suspect. Meunier said her Internet searches yielded the information. She said health officials should have called salmonella victims to tell them of the suspected tainted foods.

Patsy Kelso, the acting state epidemiologist with the Vermont Department of Health, said state officials received confirmation Saturday that peanut butter crackers were implicated. Kelso said health officials are prohibited from commenting on specific patients due to privacy guidelines, so she could not describe what interactions health officials had with the Meunier family.

The CDC said the Kellogg Co. on Jan. 14 put a precautionary hold on its peanut butter crackers, and two days later recalled the products. A variety of other companies that suspect their peanut butter came from Peanut Corp. of America have recalled their products, the CDC reports.

Meunier said she still had some uneaten Keebler crackers and peanut butter, and said she beseeched health officials to take them for testing. Tuesday, agents with the federal Food and Drug Administration took the crackers from Meunier and told her they’d be tested, she said. Results are expected in one to two weeks, she said.

Kelso said tracking down the source of a disease outbreak takes investigation. Typically, states put information on an Internet Web board, which the CDC analyzes to pick out trends.

When the CDC finds a trend, it has state health officials go back to people who became sick and have them answer detailed questionnaires to help determine the source of the illness.

That’s how the latest salmonella outbreak was traced to the peanut butter, Kelso said.

Meunier said her family has hired Seattle attorney Bill Marler, who Tuesday filed a lawsuit against PCA on behalf of the family in U.S. District Court, Middle District of Georgia. Meunier said she contacted Marler because he is an expert on legal issues surrounding food-borne illnesses.

The lawsuit contends PCA was negligent in allowing salmonella to contaminate its product and asks the court to award an unspecified amount of money to the Meuniers.

Marler said the Meunier lawsuit is the first of many he expects to file against PCA.

Kelso said peanut butter products connected to the salmonella outbreak should have been removed from store shelves by now. Jars of peanut butter are not affected by the recall, she said.

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So far, six people have died and more than 470 were sickened in 43 states. This month, the disease was traced to peanut butter that originated in a Georgia plant owned by Peanut Corporation of America, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

In addition to Kellogg, several other manufacturers and grocery chains have pulled peanut butter products from shelves. The FDA has advised consumers not to eat cookies, cakes, ice cream and other foods that contain peanut butter or peanut butter paste. Peanut butter sold in jars at supermarkets is considered safe.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, was filed by Gabrielle and Daryl Meunier, a Vermont couple whose 7-year-old son got sick on Nov. 25 with fever, vomiting and diarrhea. After being hospitalized, their son tested positive for contracting a strain of salmonella that is now linked to peanut butter. Meunier v. Peanut Corporation of America, No. 1:09-cv-00012 (M.D. Ga.).

"It's a strict liability case," said Bill Marler, managing partner of Seattle's Marler Clark, who filed the lawsuit. "We filed it in Georgia because we anticipate that eventually the cases may get consolidated either by a court or through an MDL process, and it's likely that Georgia will be the center of the attention since that's where the manufacturing facility is."

Officials at Peanut Corporation of America, which has voluntarily recalled its products, could not be reached for comment. But in a prepared statement, Stewart Parnell, president of Peanut Corporation of America, recently said: "We deeply regret that this product recall has expanded, and our first priority is to protect the health of our customers."

Marler said he has been retained by 20 other people nationwide who could file other suits. But he said the recent outbreak is not anticipated to surpass the number of lawsuits filed over another outbreak in recent years tied to Peter Pan peanut butter.

Fred Pritzker, of PritzkerLaw in Minneapolis, said he planned to file a lawsuit on Tuesday in Minnesota state court on behalf of the family of a 72-year-old woman who died in a nursing home after eating peanut butter. "This outbreak is going to expand, and we will definitely be representing many more people in this outbreak," he said.

The Kellogg products being recalled include Austin Quality Foods, Keebler brands of peanut butter sandwich crackers and some packages of Famous Amos and Keebler peanut butter cookies. Last week, the FDA said it was expanding its investigation of peanut products tied to the outbreak.

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Kellogg's Austin Quality Foods Toasty Crackers with Peanut Butter is the first product sold to consumers that's known to have tested positive for the salmonella strain initially linked only to peanut butter sold to institutions, such as nursing homes.

The outbreak has led to 474 reported illnesses and may have caused six deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. For every reported illness, dozens go unreported.

Wegmans also recalled some ice cream containing peanut butter.

Kroger said Monday that it is recalling Private Selection Peanut Butter Passion Ice Cream sold in select stores because the peanut butter in the ice cream was supplied by Peanut Corporation of America and may be contaminated with Salmonella. Stores under the following names are included in this recall: City Market, Fred Meyer, Fry's, King Soopers, QFC and Smith's.

More recalls are likely, given that the Peanut Corporation of America, which earlier recalled the suspect peanut butter and peanut paste, supplied 23 other companies with product that's been recalled. PCA first recalled peanut butter last Tuesday, then Sunday added its peanut paste, an ingredient used by food manufacturers.

The pace of new recall announcements has been slow, some food-safety experts say.

"It's taken a long time for people to sort this out," says Craig Wilson, head of food safety for Costco Wholesale. It pulled some Kellogg products off shelves last week before Kellogg put a hold on them, Wilson says.

The recall has engulfed snack foods popular with children. Salmonella is especially risky for the young, old and those with weaker immune systems. The Food and Drug Administration says peanut butter sold in stores is fine but advised consumers not to eat other products containing peanut butter or paste until they're cleared.

Many big names have said they're not affected, including Mars, Hershey, the Girl Scouts and ConAgra Foods, which recalled peanut butter in 2007.

Kellogg will deploy several thousand sales representatives to help make sure product is removed from stores, it says. "Consumers are confused," says William Marler, a food-safety attorney.

He says he bought recalled product Sunday, indicating that retailers may be confused, too.

Kellogg last week recalled 15 other products. They came up clean, as did the plant making them, says Kris Charles, a spokeswoman.

PCA, based in Lynchburg, Va., says it conducts rigorous salmonella tests and that it's working with the FDA on the contamination source.

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His mom, Gabrielle, says that it was the day before Thanksgiving when her 7-year-old began showing all the debilitating and degrading intestinal symptoms that accompany severe food poisoning.

Eventually, Christopher was identified as the first case of Salmonella Typhirium documented in Vermont and one of the earliest of the almost 500 people, from infant to age 98, sickened in the U.S. and Canada from eating salmonella-contaminated peanut butter.

The child was hospitalized for six long days.

Now, some of Gabrielle's pain has morphed into anger at the lethargy of the government's efforts to identify the contaminated food.

"The wheels of the investigation are turning way too slowly and inefficiently," she told me in an email this morning.

She says it was just last week that she learned that peanut butter-containing crackers, cookies, candy and snacks could also carry the disease. But, she charges, the government knew it and didn't effectively pass the word to consumers.

Initially the Food and Drug Administration had maintained that the potentially lethal peanut butter made by Georgia-based Peanut Corporation of American was only a danger to institutions that purchased the company's five-pound jugs.

Gabrielle and others only learned that the company also supplied peanut butter and peanut cream to companies that produced scores of products filling store shelves and bakeries when some of the manufacturers announced they were voluntarily recalling their products.

To date, the FDA has ordered no recalls, even after national food safety experts, including Seattle lawyer and internet star Bill Marler, told the FDA that immediate action was needed.

Back in Vermont, Gabrielle says a box of Keebler "Cheese & Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers" is sitting on her kitchen counter – the same "crackers that my son had eaten before he got sick."

"My son could have eaten these crackers again and potentially died. I have another son already weakened with a missing kidney and spleen. He could have died by eating these crackers," said the frustrated mother.

She questions how the government can justify not screaming the warnings of the specific food products that could be dangerous in every newspaper, radio and television station.

She says she contacted the CDC, the FDA and Keebler about her partially eaten box of crackers.

"So here I sit with the crackers in my hot little hands and no one has stepped forward to test them,'' Gabrielle says. "What a broken system."

The Centers for Disease Control says that six people have died after eating the tainted peanut butter in one product or another. The federal health detectives say that they are investigating two deaths from Minnesota, two from Virginia, one from Idaho and one from North Carolina. And, they say, they are examining others that may or may not be related.

Obviously, there is more that the government could have and perhaps should have done. But tracking the culprits in nationwide food poisoning cases is rarely easy.

For example, The number of people sickened is expected to increase, if for no other reason then there is an inherent two to three week delay between the date that the salmonella illness starts, and the date that the case is reported to public health authorities.

What this means is that someone who consumed the tainted peanut butter today and becomes ill or dies, may not be identified as a victim for three more weeks.

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Six deaths have been linked to the outbreak, which has sickened more than 470 people in 43 states, including 13 in Washington state. Three of them live in King County.

The 13, who range in age from under 10 to in their 50s, have all recovered and none had to go to hospitals, said Donn Moyer, spokesman for the Washington state Department of Health.

Most of their cases were reported in November, Moyer said, and the rest in early December.

Moyer encouraged anyone who thinks they might be suffering from salmonella to see a doctor or other health professional.

"That helps us track the disease in a way that helps us prevent more cases," he said.

Most peanut butter sold in jars at supermarkets appears to be safe, said Stephen Sundlof, head of the Food and Drug Administration's food-safety center.

But health officials said consumers who have bought any of the recalled products should throw them away. And consumers should avoid eating any products with peanut butter until more information is available about which brands may be affected.

Officials are focusing on peanut paste and peanut butter produced at a Blakely, Ga., facility owned by Peanut Corp. of America. Its peanut butter is not sold directly to consumers but distributed to institutions and food companies. The peanut paste, made from roasted peanuts, is used as an ingredient in cookies, cakes and other products that people buy in the supermarket.

"This is an excellent illustration of an ingredient-driven outbreak," said Dr. Robert Tauxe, who oversees food-borne-illness investigations for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Salmonella is a bacteria and the most common source of food poisoning in the United States, causing diarrhea, cramping and fever.

Officials said new illnesses are being reported.

Kellogg Co., which listed Peanut Corp. as one of its suppliers, has recalled 16 products. They include Austin and Keebler branded Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers, and some snack-size packs of Famous Amos Peanut Butter Cookies and Keebler Soft Batch Homestyle Peanut Butter Cookies.

Health officials said consumers who have bought any of those products should throw them away.

Hy-Vee of West Des Moines, Iowa, a Midwest supermarket chain, has recalled all bakery products made with peanut butter. Perry's Ice Cream, based in Akron, N.Y., said it was recalling select ice-cream products containing peanut butter. Those recalls covered states in the Midwest and the East Coast.

Peanut Corp. has recalled all peanut butter produced at the Georgia plant since Aug. 8 and all peanut paste produced since Sept. 26. The plant passed its last state inspection this summer, but recent tests have found salmonella.

Health officials are focusing on 30 companies out of 85 that received peanut products from the Georgia plant. Sundlof said Peanut Corp. is a relatively small supplier on the national scene.

But Seattle-area lawyer William Marler, who specializes in food-safety cases, said the government shouldn't wait for the results of more tests to request recalls.

"At least 30 companies purchased peanut butter or paste from a facility with a documented link to a nationwide salmonella outbreak," said Marler. "The FDA has the authority actually, the mandate to request recalls if the public health is threatened. Instead, the FDA has asked the companies to test their products and consider voluntary recalls. It is just not enough."

Washington usually has about 800 cases of salmonella each year, Moyer said, but these 13 are the ones that have been tied to the national outbreak.

State and local officials were not able to identify the source of their illnesses when they were sick, Moyer said, but now that the 13 cases have been tied to this outbreak, the people will be re-interviewed.

State and local health officials also have notified physicians to be on the lookout for possible salmonella cases.

The outbreak has triggered a congressional inquiry and renewed calls for an overhaul of food-safety laws. For example, the FDA lacks authority to order a recall, and instead must ask companies to voluntarily withdraw products.

"Given the numerous food-borne-illness outbreaks over the past several years, it is becoming painfully clear that the current regulatory structure is ... ill-equipped to handle these extensive investigations," said U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who chairs a panel that oversees the FDA budget.

Health officials in Minnesota and Virginia linked two deaths each to the outbreak and Idaho has reported one. Four of those five were elderly, and all had salmonella when they died, although their exact causes of death have not been determined. The CDC said the salmonella may have contributed.

An elderly North Carolina man died in November from the same strain of salmonella that's causing the outbreak, officials in that state said Friday.

The CDC said the bacteria behind the outbreak — typhimurium — is common and not an unusually dangerous strain but that the elderly or those with weakened immune systems are more at risk.

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The national salmonella outbreak has sickened more than 430 people in 43 states and may have contributed to five deaths.

Kellogg gets at least some of its paste from Lynchburg, Va.-based Peanut Corp. of America, which has recalled 21 lots of peanut butter made since July 1 at its plant in Blakely, Ga., because of possible contamination from the bacteria. While not going so far as issuing a recall, Kellogg asked stores nationwide to remove the crackers sold under its Austin and Keebler brands and urged consumers not to eat those products until regulators have completed an investigation into Peanut Corp.

Kellogg, based in Battle Creek, Mich., said it hasn't found problems or received complaints about those products.

"We are taking these voluntary actions out of an abundance of caution," Kellogg CEO David Mackay said in a news release.

The products being removed include Austin and Keebler toasted peanut butter sandwich crackers, peanut butter and jelly sandwich crackers, cheese and peanut butter sandwich crackers, and peanut butter-chocolate sandwich crackers.

Peanut Corp. also sells bulk supplies to institutions including schools, nursing homes and hospitals.

Health officials in Minnesota and Virginia have linked two deaths each to the outbreak and Idaho has reported one.

All five were adults who had salmonella when they died, though their causes of death haven't been determined. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the outbreak may have contributed.

There are about 2,000 types of salmonella, the nation's leading cause of food poisoning. About 40,000 cases are reported each year.

CDC officials say the bacteria in this outbreak has been genetically fingerprinted as the typhimurium type, which is among the most common sources of salmonella food poisoning. Salmonella typhimurium is considered a year-round problem because it's found in meat and eggs, unlike some other types associated with vegetables that causes illnesses more seasonally.

Peanut Corp. of America said none of the peanut butter being recalled is sold through retail stores, but is made for distribution to institutions, food service industries and private label food companies. The peanut butter is sold under the brand name Parnell's Pride and by the King Nut Co. as King Nut.

FDA compliance officer Sandra Williams said Kellogg's move is known as a stop-sale order and isn't as serious as a recall. Neither Williams nor a Kellogg spokesman could say how many units would be pulled, but Williams said, "It's a very large volume."

Kellogg spokeswoman Kris Charles said Thursday morning that the company is not concerned about any other products, like cookies that contain peanut butter or peanut paste, because they do not use products from Peanut Corp. or America in their production and do not make them at the same plant.

Nationally, all the illnesses began between Sept. 3 and Dec. 29, but most were sickened after Oct. 1. Most people develop diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps 12 to 72 hours after infection. The illness usually lasts four to seven days, and most people recover without treatment.

The peanut butter contamination comes almost two years after ConAgra recalled its Peter Pan brand peanut butter, which was eventually linked to at least 625 salmonella cases in 47 states. ]]>

Meanwhile, the victim toll has risen to 410 people in 43 states, according to U.S. health officials, who also said Monday that the illness may have caused three deaths.

The Minnesota report, issued on its Department of Health Web site, was a follow-up to initial tests done last week on salmonella bacteria found in a five-pound package of King Nut creamy peanut butter that had been collected from a long-term care facility.

Officials from the Minnesota Departments of Health and Agriculture had issued a product warning Friday after preliminary testing indicated the presence of salmonella in the peanut butter.

Late Saturday, King Nut Cos., of Solon, Ohio, announced it had issued a recall of King Nut peanut butter and Parnell's Pride peanut butter with the lot code "8." Both brands are manufactured by Lynchburg, Va.-based Peanut Corp. of America.

King Nut distributes peanut butter through food service accounts and does not sell it directly to consumers, the company's statement said.

The statement added, "King Nut does not supply any of the ingredients for the peanut butter distributed under its label. All other King Nut products are safe and not included in this voluntary recall."

"We are very sorry this happened," Martin Kanan, president and chief executive officer of King Nut Cos., said in the statement, adding, "We are taking immediate and voluntary action because the health and safety of those who use our products is always our highest priority."

On Sunday, Kanan told the Associated Press that the recall involved 1,000 cases of peanut butter.

Peanut Corp. of America issued its own statement on its Web site late Saturday, confirming the salmonella finding. The statement added, however, that the finding "leaves open the possibility of cross-contamination from another source. PCA is working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other agencies to determine whether the currentillness outbreak could be at all related to products made in the PCA facility."

U.S. health officials had formed a task force last week to seek the source of the latest outbreak, which began last fall and so far has sickened 410 people, according to the latest numbers issued Monday by the CDC.

Reports of people sickened have occurred between Sept. 3 and Dec. 31, 2008, with most illnesses starting after Oct. 1. About 18 percent of those who fell ill were hospitalized.

The strain of salmonella has been identified as Salmonella Typhimurium, the most common of the more than 2,500 types of salmonella bacteria in the United States. It's often found in uncooked eggs and meats, said officials with the CDC.

The recall and the potential link to the multi-state outbreak come two years after ConAgra recalled its Peter Pan brand peanut butter, which had been linked to at least 625 salmonella cases in 47 states. ]]>

In all, 42 states have reported nearly 400 cases since November. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is investigating the outbreak, but no source has been identified, health officials said.

State health department investigators are participating, but no new cases have been reported in Minnesota since Dec. 22.

Of the 30 cases in Minnesota, seven were in the Twin Cities area and the rest were scattered across the northern part of the state; 11 people have been hospitalized. A third of the patients are nursing home residents, but not from the same nursing home, a pattern that investigators find puzzling, said Health Department spokesman Doug Schultz.

The first cases in Minnesota began popping up in November, and the number has steadily increased since then, he said. As the public learns of the outbreak, more cases could be reported.

In Ohio, 51 people in 20 counties had the same type of salmonella, all about the same time that five cases appeared in Georgia. At least a dozen were hospitalized. California officials say they had 51 cases as of last week. Illinois and North Dakota also have confirmed cases.

Most people infected with salmonella develop diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps 12 to 72 hours after infection. The illness usually lasts four to seven days, and most people recover without treatment.

Steps to protect against the illness include careful handling and thorough cooking of raw meat and frequent hand washing.

CDC officials say the cases in the outbreak have all been genetically fingerprinted as the Typhimurium type, which is among the most common forms of salmonella food poisoning.

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Several dozen people ate lunch at the Country Cottage in Locust Grove, which voluntarily shut down Aug. 25 when health officials learned that more than 300 people who were sickened had eaten there. A Pryor man died after contracting a rare strain of the bacteria.

Hostess Cyndi Moore says the staff was anxious preparing for the reopening, but all in all things went well.

For patrons, they were served food instead of being allowed to go up to the restaurant's signature buffet line and dishing out their own. Moore says that allowed staff to keep better control of the food and to help save money.

State health officials announced Thursday that the restaurant was clear to open after passing rigorous tests and inspections. Among other things, the restaurant had to disconnect a private well be subject to environmental testing.

Berryhill resident and return customer Benny Tunnell found conditions as clean as usual and said the food was worth going back for extra helpings.

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"The (Food and Drug Administration) is reaching way beyond its authority to intimidate us and what we do, but we will not be intimidated," said Mark McAfee, owner of the Organic Pastures Dairy Company in Fresno, Calif.

The U.S. Justice Department filed suit against McAfee in a U.S. district court Thursday, Nov. 20, claiming that he endangered public health by violating a federal law against interstate commerce in unpasteurized milk.

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which oversees FDA, is also participating in the lawsuit.

"Raw milk and raw milk products contain a wide variety of harmful bacteria including, but not limited to, listeria monocytogenes, E. coli, salmonella, campylobacter and brucella, all of which may cause illness and possibly death," according to the federal government's complaint.

According to the federal government's lawsuit, McAfee circumvented restrictions on the interstate shipment of raw milk by labeling outgoing boxes as "pet food." Unpasteurized milk is allowed to cross state lines as long as it's used for that purpose.

However, the retail products within the boxes did not mention pet food and the labeling language was clearly directed at human consumers, according to the government's complaint.

The lawsuit contends that an employee at Organic Pastures Dairy unwittingly acknowledged the pet food label was a "legal loophole for the firm to be able to ship the product out of state" to an undercover FDA investigator.

McAfee admitted as much in a 2005 Portland Tribune article in which he was quoted as saying, "And there is no regulation that you can't eat pet food, either," according to the complaint.

Organic Pastures Dairy no longer labels its products as pet food unless the customer signs an affidavit saying the milk will only be fed to animals, McAfee said. The company established that policy after the FDA threatened it with a criminal indictment earlier this year, he said.

The only product McAfee now ships out of state is colostrum, which, as dietary supplement, can legally cross state lines, he said. Colostrum, or milk that is secreted shortly after birth, is used for immune system support and other health benefits.

"They fail to understand that what we do is completely legal," McAfee said.

McAfee expects the presiding judge, Oliver Wanger, to rule against the federal government before the case goes to trial.

The federal government wants the judge to issue an injunction prohibiting McAfee from shipping his products out of California, no matter how they are labeled.

The government's lawsuit says that seven people died and more than 460 fell ill from diseases associated with raw milk consumption between 2000 and 2005. Epidemiological studies have established a direct link between raw milk and gastrointestinal disease, according to the complaint.

Proponents of raw milk, such as the Weston A. Price Foundation, say such studies are biased and based on sloppy science.

"Most of them represent a rush to judgment in which the investigators blamed raw milk without sufficient evidence or even in the face of contrary evidence," according to a report from the foundation.

Raw milk contains beneficial proteins, enzymes, vitamins and minerals, according to proponents.

Christine Chessen, director of the California Raw Milk Association, said that raw milk can alleviate symptoms of asthma, eczema, allergies and immune disease.

"I don't see why they're making such a big deal out of it, especially since people have gotten such amazing health benefits from it," she said.

The federal government alleges that the Organic Pastures Dairy website unlawfully claimed "that their raw milk and raw milk products can cure, mitigate, treat, or prevent various diseases including, but not limited to, cataracts, ear infections, sinus infections, arthritis pain, allergy, and asthma."

McAfee said that his website did not make such claims, but contained links to other sites that include health benefit information and substantiated those claims with scientific studies.

"That's legal to do," he said.

At one time, the Organic Pastures Dairy website contained testimonials from customers, but those were removed in 2005 after the company was fined by the California Department of Health Services, McAfee said.

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While advocates say non-pasteurized milk has health benefits, the FDA prohibits interstate sales of raw milk products because they also can carry harmful bacteria.

Organic Pastures owner Mark McAfee says the company has never shipped raw milk across state lines for human consumption. He says the company follows FDA guidelines and has done nothing illegal.

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The restaurant passed an inspection conducted by state and local health inspectors on Nov. 12. The inspection included environmental swabbing of 35 locations within the restaurant, and no E. coli 0111 contamination was identified.

The owners of the Country Cottage restaurant have worked with the Oklahoma State Department of Health and Mayes County Health Department to comply with the terms established in a formal “Agreement to Reopen Country Cottage Restaurant”. The restaurant has met all terms of that agreement which include the following:

1. The restaurant will not be allowed to reopen until an inspection by the Oklahoma State Department of Health reveals no critical violations.

2. Country Cottage must disconnect the private well located on restaurant premises from the water lines that supply the restaurant. Drinking water at the restaurant must be from an approved public water supply system.

3. The operators shall not employee persons without determining by interview that those persons do not have a diarrheal illness. Operators will exclude employees from working at the restaurant if the employee has diarrheal illness.

4. Country Cottage must allow repeat environmental swabbing/testing of the interior of the restaurant upon request.

5. Country Cottage will conduct a thorough cleaning and disinfection of all floors, walls, tables, coolers, food preparation surfaces and food serving surfaces at the restaurant.

6. Operators shall complete the installation of three additional handwashing sinks that were being installed at the time the restaurant closed.

7. All bathrooms must be fully operational and a monitoring system for employee hand-washing must be implemented.

8. The operators shall require each employee to attend and complete a food handler’s class to be conducted at Country Cottage within 30 days of the date of execution of the agreement to reopen the restaurant.

9. The kitchen manager and owner who work at Country Cottage shall obtain a Food Service Manager’s Certificate by attending training for food service managers conducted by representatives of the Oklahoma Restaurant Association within 30 days of the date of execution of the agreement to reopen the restaurant.

10. The operators shall ensure the entire facility is maintained and cleaned as necessary to comply with Oklahoma State Department of Health regulations.

11. The operators shall use monitoring plans applicable to the facility to monitor cleaning, food temperature and other regulatory requirements identified during routine inspections for a year from the date of execution of the agreement to reopen the restaurant.

The outbreak was linked in August to contamination by E. coli 0111, a rare type of toxin-producing bacteria not normally associated with a foodborne outbreak of the magnitude experienced in Oklahoma. While no single food item was found to be the source of illness at the restaurant, the Oklahoma State Department of Health believes several different foods became contaminated with the E. coli 0111 bacteria, leading to exposure of restaurant customers Aug. 15-24.

Health officials note that toxin-producing E. coli are notoriously difficult to culture from food or the environment. This provided a challenge throughout the investigation. Despite testing numerous surfaces within the restaurant, various food items, stool specimens from foodhandlers and well water specimens, no specimen yielded the E. coli O111 bacteria.

A total of 341 outbreak-related cases were reported; 56 were children less than 18 years of age. The age range of cases was 3 months to 88 years. Seventy-two persons were hospitalized; one person died.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health is continuing to study the range of complications and severity of illness of persons hospitalized.

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The legal action comes as the Government appeared to admit the industrial chemical melamine, toxic in large doses, may be widespread within China's food supply and not confined to the dairy industry.

The state-run media yesterday published a report saying the illegal practice of mixing melamine into animal feed to boost its apparent protein levels was an "open secret" in the food industry.

The unusual admission comes after this week's disclosure that four brands of Chinese eggs sold in Hong Kong and two mainland provinces were also contaminated with melamine. Agricultural officials suggest that the chickens must have been fed melamine-laced feed.

There have been no reports so far of any illness from eating contaminated eggs.

Shanghai's Livestock Office had earlier pledged to check whether the city's seafood supplies were contaminated by melamine and are inspecting more than 100 local feed producers.

The nine new lawsuits were filed against the Sanlu Group, in the city of Shijiazhuang, where the company is headquartered.

The melamine-tainted milk scandal emerged in September when it became public that babies who had consumed Sanlu baby milk powder products developed kidney stones.

Four babies have died from kidney failure and the Government has admitted that at least 53,000 children have been admitted to hospital.

Almost 2400 babies are still in hospital being treated, the Government said on Thursday, with one in a serious condition. More than 48,000 have recovered, but earlier in the week another 90 babies were admitted to hospitals around the country.

Sanlu knew about complaints a year ago and had confirmation of the contamination in August, but a recall was not issued until early September because of pressure from the Government to suppress bad news, including food safety issues, ahead of and during the Olympic Games.

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The girls, both 9 and members of a Lake Stevens cheerleading squad, had done a great job at a game that afternoon.

The special treat turned into a nightmare for the Riojas family.

Riojas' daughter, a third-grader, became violently ill after she came into contact with E. coli allegedly at the restaurant on Oct. 11, her mother said.

Snohomish Health District officials said Wednesday four additional cases were connected to the Lake Stevens restaurant. As of Wednesday afternoon, 17 out of 19 E. coli cases in Snohomish County were traced to the Mexican restaurant.

The Riojas family filed a lawsuit Wednesday morning against Ixtapa, blaming the restaurant for their daughter's severe attack of E. coli. They want the restaurant owner to pay for their daughter's medical bills.

"I don't think it was intentional. We've gone to the restaurant a number of times. We love Ixtapa. It's a local family restaurant. The owner has been very kind," Alison Riojas said. "I know they'd never do this to a 9-year-old girl on purpose, but it happened to her at their restaurant."

Riojas' daughter was hospitalized and lost at least 6 pounds from her 64-pound frame. She pleaded for help to ease the pain caused by the bacteria.

"She was begging for relief. She was praying," Alison Riojas said Wednesday. "She was in so much pain and there was nothing I could do."

Public health officials continued Wednesday to interview restaurant patrons about what they had eaten in an attempt to pinpoint the source of the bacteria.

Riojas' daughter and her friend ate chips, salsa, guacamole, a chicken enchilada, rice and beans. Alison Riojas ate the same meal, except she didn't have guacamole.

Riojas and her husband didn't get sick, and neither did their other daughter, 6, who chose not to eat that day. Their older daughter's friend did get sick, Riojas said.

"It was like Russian roulette with food. I wish I would have been given the food instead of her," Alison Riojas said.

It isn't clear if health officials will be able to find the original source of the contamination, said Rick Zahalka, food program manager for Snohomish Health District.

"We sent in one sample of a cheese, but after further investigation it was ruled out," he said. "The trouble is the time lag. There is an incubation period; if a person gets sick or develops symptoms it's several days after they've eaten the contaminated food, then another several days for the lab results from the doctor. By then the food is gone."

Riojas' daughter complained of some stomach pain but didn't have a fever. She was sent home from school Oct. 14 and became increasing ill with diarrhea.

Riojas took her daughter to the emergency room at Providence Everett Medical Center twice on Oct. 16. The girl was treated for dehydration and pain and released both times. Her symptoms worsened and the next morning she was rushed to the emergency room at Children's Hospital in Seattle, where she began to vomit blood, according to court documents.

"She was crawling down the hall to get to the bathroom," Riojas said.

The girl tested positive for the same strain of E. coli associated with the outbreak at Ixtapa, according to the lawsuit.

The Riojas' attorney is representing four other families affected by the E. coli outbreak. More lawsuits are expected to be filed, said attorney Drew Falkenstein.

Falkenstein is with Marler Clark, a Seattle law firm that has represented thousands of people in food poisoning cases, including the E. coli outbreak connected to Jack in the Box in 1993.

"This was a serious outbreak. Here in Snohomish County we don't have very many foodborne outbreaks a year -- thank goodness -- and I don't have another big E. coli outbreak to compare this to," Zahalka said. "We will be monitoring Ixtapa. We'll be working with the restaurant to make sure that all food safety requirements will be complied with."

The restaurant's owner is taking these illnesses very seriously, Bellevue attorney Stephen Pidgeon said.

"Obviously we have our concern about what the source may be," he said. "Ixtapa is a very sanitary restaurant and very professionally ran restaurant."

The health of the restaurant's patrons are the owner's top priority, Pidgeon said.

The health district Wednesday approved reopening of the restaurant after extensive cleaning. Ixtapa's owner expects to reopen as soon as the restaurant receives a shipment of new food stocks, Zahalka said. Restaurant workers tossed out any food in unsealed containers, sanitized the kitchen, work spaces and utensils and replaced cutting boards. The employees were retrained on food safety, Zahalka said.

Doctors say Riojas' daughter should make a full recovery but for the next two weeks her parents must watch for signs of a syndrome associated with E. coli contamination that can lead to more serious problems.

The girl was only able to drink water and eat ice chips until Tuesday, when she was finally able to nibble on a bagel and an English muffin.

She has little energy, her mother said. She naps for hours, and playing a board game wears her out, Riojas said.

She hopes the outbreak will motivate legislators to make tougher laws to protect restaurant patrons.

"We live in a country where you shouldn't feel scared to take your children out to a restaurant," Riojas said.

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The Snohomish Health District announced Tuesday that the Lake Stevens eatery is believed to be the source of 13 of 17 recent local cases of E. coli. An investigation into the outbreak indicated people likely were exposed to the bacteria at the restaurant, health officials said.

Health officials are continuing to investigate the outbreak's cause. The restaurant voluntarily closed while authorities try to pinpoint the cause of the outbreak.

Ray and Allison Riojas blame their elementary school-aged daughter’s bout with the bacteria on the restaurant, according to a lawsuit filed this morning in Snohomish County Superior Court.

The family dined at the restaurant Oct. 11. Their daughter ate chips, salsa, guacamole, a chicken enchilada, rice and beans, attorney Drew Falkenstein wrote in the lawsuit.

The girl lost her appetite and was sent home from school Oct. 14. She became increasing ill with diarrhea.

Her mother took her to the emergency room at Providence Everett Medical Center twice on Oct. 16. The girl was treated for dehydration and pain and released both times. Her symptoms worsened and she was rushed again to the emergency room at Children’s Hospital in Seattle, where she began to vomit blood, according to the lawsuit.

She tested positive for the same strain of E. coli associated with the outbreak at Ixtapa, Falkenstein wrote in the court documents.

The girl lost nine pounds and consumed nothing but ice chips and water for nine days. She was finally able to eat a bagel and English muffin yesterday, according to the attorney.

“She was a very sick girl,” Falkenstein said. “She continues to recover and is very weak.”

The girl is too weak to walk up stairs at her family home and must be carried by her parents, he said. She has not returned to school.

Falkenstein is an attorney with Marler Clark, a Seattle law firm that has represented thousands of people in food poisoning cases, including the E. coli outbreak connected to Jack in the Box in 1993.

The firm is representing four other families in the Snohomish County outbreak. More lawsuits are expected to be filed in connection with outbreak, Falkenstein said

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Officials said 13 of the people who fell ill ate at the restaurant -- Ixtapa -- located at 303 91st Ave. N.E.

After learning of the findings, the owner voluntarily closed the business and is cooperating with officials to resolve food-safety problems, the Snohomish Health District said.

Public health workers will oversee sanitizing the restaurant and disposing of opened food products. Health District spokeswoman Suzanne Pate said the restaurant was being "very cooperative."

Health workers are now trying to identify the specific food that was the source of the illness. Contaminated lettuce was identified as the source of an E. coli outbreak in Washington earlier this year.

"It's like looking for a needle in the haystack," Pate said.

Ixtapa owners said other restaurants in Snohomish County by the same name have not been implicated in the illnesses.

"Food safety and the health of our customers is the No. 1 priority of Ixtapa's owners and employees," a statement issued by the restaurant said.

"All of our employees are certified through state-approved food safety programs, and we set the highest standards for compliance."

The onset of illnesses occurred between Oct. 7 and Oct. 17. Most of the sickened people ate at the restaurant between Oct. 2 and Oct. 3. Two were hospitalized briefly. No new cases were reported as of Tuesday.

Officials said three of the 17 sickened people did not eat at the restaurant, and health workers were investigating any pattern among them. "Sometimes links emerge later," Pate said. "Or there's a possibility they might be three of the usual cases we see a year."

A fourth person who fell ill has not yet been interviewed.

Gary Goldbaum, director of the health district, said Snohomish County health care providers should be on the lookout for patients with E. coli infections, which can cause bloody diarrhea and stomach cramping with little or no fever.

E. coli refers to a large group of bacteria, some of them harmful. Infections occur when people ingest small amounts of fecal matter, often through unpasteurized liquids and contaminated food and water, or by failing to wash hands after going to the bathroom, changing a diaper or touching farm animals.

People usually recover from the illness, but young and old people have a higher risk of serious complications.

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The lawsuit filed Monday in Washtenaw Circuit Court on behalf of Lindsey Jennings, a University of Michigan senior allegedly sickened in the outbreak, follows a lawsuit filed Oct. 10 in Ingham County by a Michigan State University student.

Unlike the earlier claims of Michigan State University student Samantha Steffen that she got sick after eating iceberg lettuce prepared by Aunt Mid's and served by a university cafeteria, Jennings believes she was sickened by lettuce served by a Jimmy John's Gourmet Sandwiches outlet in Ann Arbor.

"This is more than coincidental that the health department confirms the same strain of 0157:H7 bacteria," said Jenning's lawyer Michael Heilmann of Trenton. "The chances are like one-in-a-billion that the source could be something other than Aunt Mid's."

Tainted lettuce was grown in California, processed, chopped or shredded in Detroit by Aunt Mid's and packaged for shipment to restaurants and other institutional food preparers, according to Michigan health and agriculture investigators. The state issued a warning last month to commercial food preparers to stop serving iceberg lettuce purchased from Aunt Mid's.

Members of the Riggio family, which owns and operates the produce wholesaler, said no trace of E. coli bacteria has been found by state or private testing inside the plant on West Jefferson. Production has resumed after a voluntary two week halt.

None of the tainted lettuce was discovered or tested by the state, but shipments from Aunt Mid's appeared to be the common denominator in cases confirmed through medical testing to infections caused by E. coli strain 0157:H7.

At least 38 people were sickened in September in Michigan, including students who ate at University of Michigan and Michigan State University cafeterias and inmates served iceberg lettuce salads inside the Lenawee County Jail.

Heilmann said he also represents an employee of the University of Michigan housing department who also claims to have been sickened by food from a Jimmy John's in Ann Arbor. He said he will file a third lawsuit soon.

"We are advised by lawyers to not comment on pending litigation," said Jimmy John's spokeswoman Ali Goldner.

No new onset of illnesses has been reported since September, said James McCurtis, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Community Health. He added that California agriculture officials continue to attempts to pinpoint the source of the lettuce.

According to her lawyers, Jenning's suffered abdominal cramps, vomiting, and bloody diarrhea that were so severe she was having difficulty breathing when she sought treatment at a university clinic. She spent 10 days in Royal Oak Beaumont Hospital. She was fed by a tube inserted through her chest until Oct. 6, and continues to recover from her illness.

"This young woman endured a severe and excruciating illness, just because of something she ate," said another of her attorneys, William Marler, a Seattle-based attorney who specializes in filing food borne illness lawsuits nationwide. "She was so worried about missing school that she returned to class while still being fed by the PICC (chest tube). We need to make sure she doesn't worry about how to pay her medical bills. We also need to work to prevent future outbreaks."

Dominic Riggio, president of Aunt Mid's, said Tuesday, "We haven't seen the lawsuit so it would be inappropriate for us to comment at this time."

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Spokeswoman Suzanne Pate said the district's nurses noted two cases last week and on Friday asked Snohomish County physicians to do further testing if any patients came in with bloody diarrhea for at least two days — a symptom of E. coli.

By noon Monday, medical professionals in the county had reported a total 14 cases, none of which have yet been confirmed by additional testing, which can take several days.

Snohomish County has between 16 and 20 reported cases of E. coli in a year, "so this is a significant number," Pate said.

The source of the contamination isn't known, she said.

Health-district officials are reading through the nine-page questionnaire that the ill patients completed to check for anything in common, such as a place they visited.

Pate said E. coli is a fecal-oral form of contamination.

It could be picked up if someone "patted a sheep and ate cotton candy," for example, or changed a diaper, then prepared food without washing hands first, she said.

Seattle attorney Bill Marler said the biggest reservoir for E. coli is cattle feces. Marler represented some of the 600 people sickened during a 1993 E. coli outbreak linked to improperly cooked hamburgers at Jack in the Box restaurants.

"Whether it's contaminated lettuce or hamburger, you always have to look for the cow," Marler said.

The summer petting-zoo season is over, he said.

There's been a nationwide outbreak of E. coli contamination in the past 30 days.

On Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said cattle fed an ethanol byproduct called distiller's grain, a cheap and common feed, have a higher concentration of acid in their digestive tracts and are more likely to have E. coli than cornfed cattle.

The Department of Agriculture didn't tell farmers to refrain from feeding distiller's grain to cattle.

Since early September, E. coli outbreaks have been linked to lettuce grown in California and beef sold in Vermont.

In addition to diarrhea, nausea and abdominal cramping, E. coli can cause kidney failure and in some cases be fatal.

Three children died in the 1993 outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants.

"Public Health in Snohomish County is working to solve this disease puzzle," said director Dr. Gary Goldbaum.

"No single source is jumping out at us from the preliminary investigation. However, we learn more with each interview and each lab test."

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Michigan agriculture officials had previously named the supplier of the lettuce as Aunt Mid's Produce of Detroit but had not identified where the lettuce was grown.

The outbreak, involving bagged, industrial-sized packages of iceberg lettuce sold through wholesale venues to restaurants and institutions, sickened students at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan, and inmates at Lenawee County Jail before spreading to metro Detroit.

The Detroit Free Press reported late Thursday that Michigan agriculture officials had confirmed the state of origin, although a region wasn't specified.

Several questions remain to be answered, including in which part of California the lettuce originated.

Bob Perkins, executive director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau, said September is peak season for Salinas Valley lettuce growers.

"That's when our growers are very busy," said Perkins. "If it's California bagged lettuce, there's a real probability that it will be tied to our area, or to somebody that we know."

Even if it turns out that the lettuce was grown outside the Salinas Valley, he expects the implications could weigh heavily on a leafy green industry still reeling from the 2006 E. coli outbreak in spinach that sickened more than 200 and left three people dead.

Consumers from California may be familiar enough with the state's geography to differentiate the San Joaquin Valley or Imperial Valley from Salinas Valley, but Perkins thinks that's not likely the case for someone living outside the state.

"For anybody outside of California," he said, "what they're going to remember is California."

As of late Thursday, the news that California had been identified hadn't yet traveled through the local industry.

Perkins said the other big question will be whether health officials will be able to suggest a possible cause for how the bacteria was introduced.

"Everybody's going to want to know as much as possible about the potential causes, because everybody is doing pretty much everything they can to prevent outbreaks," he said.

For consumers reading about food safety outbreaks, he suspects it's hard to know what choices to make. And confusion doesn't help the industry sell its product, he said.

"Just talking about California certainly affects consumer confidence," he said.

Likewise, Dennis Donohue, president of the Grower-Shipper Association of the Central Coast, said the determination that California is the source of the lettuce is only one part of a complete picture.

"How was the product handled by the processor? How was the product handled by the product's consumers? How was it consumed?" he said.

As a founding member of the California Leafy Greens Handler Marketing Agreement, Donohue said he was proud of the efforts grower-shippers have made to ensure food safety.

"Obviously we would hope that the source would not be identified with that membership," he said. "But no one has ever said it would be a zero-incident world."

But wherever in California the lettuce turns out to have been grown, Donohue said, it will have some impact on consumer trust.

"Consumers, in terms of confidence levels, they tend not to split hairs. So the strongest link is affected by the weakest link," said Donohue. "This is an issue that has affected our industry, if nothing else, in costs and practices, and we're going to have to be eternally vigilant."

Aunt Mid's Produce of Detroit was identified as one of the Michigan suppliers. The company immediately stopped its lettuce distribution, said Chief Executive Officer Philip Riggio, and had its supply and processing facilities tested by outside experts. The tests found no evidence of contamination.

The Michigan Department of Agriculture also tested Aunt Mid's lettuce, with no findings of E. coli, said Jennifer Holton, MDA spokeswoman.

Holton said Aunt Mid's will be able to resume operations soon and the investigation is ongoing in cooperation with California food and safety officials.

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"It's an accident so I'm not mad, but I'm annoyed I got sick. It just shouldn't happen," said Samantha Steffen, a 19-year-old pre-med student from Lake Villa, Ill.

Steffen's lawsuit was filed Thursday in Ingham County Circuit Court against Aunt Mid's Produce Co., a supplier of cut and chopped iceberg lettuce to restaurants and institutional food preparers. Shipments of lettuce from Aunt Mid's have been identified by Michigan Community Health Department investigators as the source of some of the illness in the widespread outbreak caused by E. coli strain O157:H7.

Steffen got sick after eating salad in the university's Holmes dormitory cafeteria early last month. She received treatment for dehydration at a local hospital emergency room after suffering days of nausea, abdominal cramps and bouts of bloody diarrhea. Tests revealed she was infected with E. coli O157:H7.

"I missed class and I haven't been allowed to go back to my job in food service because I still get nauseated," Steffens said. "The hospital bills are pretty expensive, $1,600 so far, and I still don't feel good."

Aunt Mid's halted shipment of the product in early September, when Michigan Health officials issued a warning to restaurants and institutional preparers about the link between the outbreak and Aunt Mid's. Two more cases of 0157:H7 infections were reported to state officials Thursday, bringing the total in Michigan so far to 36.

"Aunt Mid's remains the only source linked to some of the cases. The cause of others remains unidentified so far," said Michigan Health spokesman James McCurtis. "They (Aunt Mid's) had multiple grower sources and although I think we are coming closer, the source of the problem still hasn't been identified."

In the last 12 years, more than 20 E. coli outbreaks nationwide have been traced to leafy greens, including a spinach outbreak in 2006 that made more than 200 ill and caused four deaths, according to the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Steffen is represented by two law firms that have specialized in food poisoning cases and have worked together in the past, most recently representing Michigan victims of the 2006 spinach E. coli outbreak.

Representatives of Aunt Mid's couldn't be reached for comment. ]]>

Beijing is struggling with fallout from adulteration of milk with the industrial chemical melamine. At home four babies have died, and thousands of infants fell sick, while around the world products made with Chinese milk have been recalled.

The government has not updated figures issued on September 21, when it said that 12,892 infants were in hospital, 104 with serious illness, and close to 40,000 others were affected but did not need major treatment.

But reports from local media across the country compiled by Reuters suggest the number of affected children has risen to nearly 94,000, although most are not in a serious condition.

In some areas diagnoses rocketed up in the space of just a few days. In the most extreme case, northwestern Gansu province, the number of sick children climbed to 13,459 by Sept 26 from 1,695 a week earlier, the official Xinhua agency said.

Worst hit so far is central Henan province, with over 30,000 cases by the end of September. Neighbouring Hebei also has nearly 16,000 cases. The province is home to Sanlu Dairy group, which made the contaminated formula that sparked the broader scandal.

Despite the rash of cases across the country -- few areas appear to have been entirely immune -- the government says it has the problem under control and recent checks have found no trace of melamine, the toxic additive, in liquid milk.

The number of sick children appearing at hospitals is also falling after news of the problem has blanketed domestic media and spread across the internet, prompting parents to take extra care about what they feed their children.

"The daily reports of infants who were diagnosed and hospitalized are decreasing noticeably, " said Chen Junshi, a researcher from Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety of Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

But he declined to say how many had been ill overall.

"I'm not authorised to publish the number of sick infants," he added at a news conference held by the Ministry of Health.

Even if the pace of new diagnoses is slowing, there is still room for a major leap in the total number of affected children because some of the country's most densely populated cities and provinces, like Shanghai, have not yet disclosed any figures.

NEW STANDARDS

Public worries about tainted milk have been diluted in the past two weeks, as China was transfixed by the country's first space walk and then enjoying the week-long National Day holiday.

But as part of an ongoing effort to restore confidence in the "made in China" brand, the government on Wednesday also released new dairy safety standards, that set limits on melamine, a cheap industrial chemical that can be used to cheat quality checks.

The limits set by the Ministry of Health's new standards are one milligram of melamine per kilogram for infant formula, 2.5 milligrams per kilogram for liquid milk, milk powder and food products containing at least 15 percent milk.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said earlier this month that no amount of melamine is safe in baby formula, but China said it has set levels low enough to protect its people's health.

"There is probably a little amount of melamine in the environment, " Wang Xuening, deputy director of the Health Ministry's Health Supervision Bureau, told the conference.

"So we couldn't set zero levels, " he said, adding that melamine content below the new limit is definitely not a threat to human health. Wang said the limits mainly aim to curb deliberate use of the chemical as an additive.

Hebei province has already arrested 27 people suspected of involvement in contaminating milk with melamine. Sanlu group's chairwoman Tian Wenhua was also detained last month.

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Beaver was allegedly sickened by an E. coli bacteria but not E. coli O157:H7, the type that most consumers are aware of. That bacteria drove the recall of almost 30 million pounds of meat last year and was blamed for an outbreak involving fresh spinach in 2006 in which five died.

Instead, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says Beaver and 313 others who ate food from an Oklahoma restaurant in August were sickened by E. coli O111, a rare type of E. coli that can also be deadly and is becoming increasingly familiar to public health officials.

From 1990 to 2007, O111 was linked to 10 reported illness outbreaks in the U.S., the CDC says. Four of the 10 were linked to food. Before the Oklahoma outbreak, in which one person died, the biggest O111 outbreak happened in New York in 2004. Unpasteurized apple cider was blamed for 212 illnesses.

Milder reactions

E. coli O111 is a Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, or STEC. It is one of a handful of non-O157 STECs that have caused 22 reported illness outbreaks in the U.S. from 1990 to 2007, the CDC says. Food caused 10 of the outbreaks.

Illnesses caused by the non-O157 STECs tend to be milder than those caused by O157, the CDC says. But some can cause equally severe disease and kidney failure, a danger of O157. In Oklahoma, 17 needed dialysis, state officials say.

The number of reported non-O157 outbreaks is small. But others may have gone unreported because doctors may not have looked for non-O157 E. coli in sick patients. "There's a significant possibility that illnesses and outbreaks have been missed," says Elisabeth Hagen of the Office of Public Health for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The CDC estimates that more than 25,000 non-O157 STEC infections occur each year in the U.S. — about a third the number of O157:H7 infections.

Research has also shown that other E. coli types may be more prevalent than thought, Richard Raymond, the USDA's undersecretary for food safety, told officials meeting on the subject last October. He cited a recent study in Nebraska in which nearly 50% of E. coli infections there were non-O157:H7s. Other countries have seen the same, Hagen says.

Expanded testing

Cattle are a primary source of E. coli. While there are many types of E. coli, only O157:H7 is routinely tested for by the meat industry and the USDA. It was identified in the 1980s and was declared an adulterant in ground beef in 1994.

Given increasing infection reports, the USDA plans to begin some testing of ground beef for six other E. coli types, including O111, that are causing most of the non-O157 infections, Hagen says. Testing may begin within months, she adds.

It's not clear whether more non-O157 STEC infections are occurring or whether they're being identified more often, Hagen says. The USDA wants to determine how prevalent they are and find ways to reduce any risks to consumers. None of the 22 non-O157 outbreaks has been linked to meat. That has occurred in other countries.

"We think it's a significant enough public health concern to see if it's a problem," Hagen says.

Food associations say they support study of other E. coli. But they say it's too soon to say whether they should be called adulterants, which would cause recalls in the future. Proper cooking destroys E. coli.

"We need a much better understanding of what the landscape looks like," says Robert Brackett of the Grocery Manufacturers Association. He also says that industry efforts to rid meat of E. coli O157:H7 — including washing cattle carcasses — work against other E. coli.

Oklahoma investigation

The Oklahoma outbreak, which state officials say ended last month, has been linked only to Country Cottage, an independent buffet-style restaurant in Locust Grove, Okla., but not to a cause. The restaurant has closed.

The CDC identified E. coli O111 as the culprit on Aug. 29, 10 days after Braylee had the biggest meal of her life, including chicken fried steak and potatoes.

When Braylee first got diarrhea, her parents thought it was a normal bug. Then her stools turned bloody and she was hospitalized, says her father, Jake Beaver. Her parents hope she'll avoid lifelong kidney problems, which can arise.

"I didn't know E. coli could do this," Beaver says. "I just thought people got a little sick."

Dana and Rick Boner of Monroe, Iowa, also thought their daughter, Kayla, had a regular bug last year when she fell ill on her 14th birthday. Kayla died 11 days later because of an E. coli O111 infection — the cause of which was never determined — her mother says.

"I didn't even know there were any other strains but O157," says Boner, an insurance agent.

She speculates that other non-O157 illnesses have gone undetected or incorrectly reported for years, given the lack of awareness about it.

"I want people to know there are other strains," she says. "How could my child be the only person who got this?"

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A loose grouping of more than 100 lawyers across China have been offering free legal advice to the families of children who became ill after drinking milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine, said Chang Boyang, one of the lawyers.

The group already has helped the parents of a 1-year-old boy who developed kidney stones after drinking tainted milk to file a lawsuit against the dairy at the center of the crisis, Sanlu Group Co. The court in Henan province has not yet said whether it will hear the suit, believed to be the first since the scandal broke last month.

The government has been struggling to show the public that it is dealing successfully with the scandal, which has battered the country's image, so carefully cultivated during the Beijing Olympics. At least four babies have died and more than 54,000 children have been sickened.

On Monday, the State Council, China's Cabinet and highest government body, acknowledged the dairy industry was "chaotic" and had suffered from a grave lack of oversight, while pledging to monitor milk products from farm to dinner table.

But the government has also imposed controls on media coverage of the crisis, suggesting it does not want it to become a focal point of public dismay.

At least 14 lawyers from Henan province who have been advising victims' families were told by officials from the provincial government's justice department to stop their activities, Chang told the Associated Press in a telephone interview.

"They called me and my boss at my law firm and put pressure on me," Chang said. "They said that this has become a political issue and that I ought to follow the arrangements set out by the government."

"If this suggestion is disobeyed, the lawyer and the firm will be dealt with," Chang quoted the official as saying.

Henan's justice department could not immediately be reached for comment.

Chang said he and the other lawyers from Henan took their names off the list of the group's volunteers but still continue to field calls and offer advice.

"This incident will not affect my work. I was just giving the authorities 'face' by taking my name off the list," Chang said. "Sometimes you've got to learn to compromise."

The State Council has ordered hospitals to provide free treatment for sick infants, but children like the toddler whose parents filed last month's lawsuit are not covered because he became sick before the scandal broke on Sept. 12. Free medical care is only available to those sickened after that date.

Chang said the lawyers have been preparing other clients for a potential joint lawsuit if the government continues to refuse to provide compensation.

Chinese authorities have blamed dairy suppliers for the scandal, saying they added melamine to watered-down milk to fool quality control tests and make the product appear rich in protein. The chemical can cause kidney stones as the body tries to eliminate it and, in extreme cases, lead to life-threatening kidney failure.

The crisis — which has spread overseas with Chinese milk products pulled out of stores in dozens of countries — has forced the government to fire local and even high-level officials for negligence, and make repeated promises to raise product safety standards.

Brazil and Liberia became the latest countries to take action. Brazil barred all Chinese food imports Tuesday, while Liberia banned Chinese dairy products.

Meanwhile, China's iconic White Rabbit candy was back in production after being pulled from shelves in the U.S., Europe and Asia following tests that found it contained melamine, a state-run newspaper reported Tuesday.

Guan Sheng Yuan Co. did not say when the candy would go on sale again, according to China Daily. The company could not be immediately contacted Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Vietnam's vice minister of health, Cao Minh Quang, said Tuesday that 23 milk products had tested positive for melamine. The country has already recalled 300 tons of products, most imported from China.

In the Philippines, traces of melamine were found in a milk product that already had been pulled from store shelves. It's the third Chinese-made milk product sold in the country found to be tainted.

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E. coli bacteria found on frozen leftover meat perfectly matches the bacteria found in stool samples taken from several people who became ill, said Dr. Mark Lundberg, Butte County health officer.

He said it's still unclear how the meat became contaminated.

Hundreds of people attended the barbecue on Sept. 6, which raised money for the volunteer fire department in Forest Ranch. Afterward, a number of people became sick with severe stomach cramps and diarrhea. Four people got so ill they had to be hospitalized.

Health officials learned that the sickness was caused by a dangerous strain of E. coli bacteria called E. coli 0157:H7.

Interviews with people who attended the event led officials to conclude the tri-tip was contaminated and made people sick. However, they couldn't be sure until the link was proven by test results from the state lab, Lundberg said in a phone interview on Monday.

It's still not known how the cooked meat became contaminated, he said, and it may never be known.

Food preparers at the event had the right equipment and, according to interviews, seemed to do everything right, he said, but obviously something went wrong.

When large amounts of food are prepared there is the potential for contamination, he said. It's possible the cooked meat came into contact with juices from the raw meat. Or possibly, he said, someone who helped prepare the food was sick and didn't wash his or her hands properly.

People who are planning to serve food at public events are welcome to call the Public Health Department to obtain guidelines for safe food preparation, he said. The number to call is 538-7281. ]]>

Dominic Riggio, president of the Detroit-based company, said that nearly 100 samples were tested by the company, a third-party lab and the state. All were negative, he said Oct. 6.

“Our plans are to start processing iceberg lettuce again very soon,” he said. “It depends on how soon I can get trucks loaded and how soon I can get trucks here.”

Riggio said Aunt Mid’s has disposed of all its iceberg lettuce since the Michigan Department of Community Health linked its product to an outbreak of E. coli in that state and Illinois Sept. 26.

“There’s nothing left to test here,” he said. “We feel like we should be able to get a retraction from the state health department or an endorsement from the state that says our product is safe to eat.”

Jennifer Holton, spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Agriculture, said Oct. 6 that while all of the state’s product tests were negative for E. coli, the samples were taken in late September, after the last reported illness.

“We’re still looking at lettuce as the primary source of illness, and Aunt Mid’s is still our common thread,” she said.

Spokesman James McCurtis said the Michigan Department of Community Health linked the outbreak to Aunt Mid’s after clusters of illnesses emerged, including nine Michigan State University students and three University of Michigan students who ate at campus facilities. Five inmates at Lenawee County Jail also became sick.

As of Oct. 2, there were 35 reported illnesses and at least 18 hospitalizations in Michigan and six illnesses and five hospitalizations in Illinois. An Ohio resident also became ill while traveling in Illinois.

The Canadian Health Inspection Agency said Oct. 4 that two illnesses in Ontario appear to be related to the outbreak.

Public health officials in New York and Oregon have denied published reports that cases related to the outbreak have occurred in those states.

Riggio has declined to say where the company sources its iceberg lettuce. However, Jerry Wojtala, deputy director of the Michigan Department of Agriculture’s food and dairy division, said Aunt Mid’s was sourcing from multiple growers in multiple states, including California, when the outbreak started. ]]>

The lawsuit filed by Jansen Saunders and his parents against S&S Foods alleges 84 people were sickened by tainted meat at the Boy Scout camp near Goshen, and the company should assist affected families. The suit filed Friday in Rockbridge County Circuit Court says Jansen became ill July 25 and tested positive for E. coli infection while hospitalized.

A telephone message left Wednesday for an official with S&S's corporate parent, CTI Foods, wasn't immediately returned.

The suit is the second filed by a scout against S&S ]]>

William Marler, whose law firm specializes in food-borne illness, said he's tried to get the federal government to change its rule but to no avail.

Marler said he tracks outbreaks of E. coli and similar illnesses around the nation and has kept an eye on the situation in Forest Ranch, where 27 people became ill after eating food at a Sept. 6 fundraiser for the volunteer fire department. All signs point to tri-tip served at the event as causing the illness, according to the Butte County Public Health Department.

E. coli bacteria is all around and most of it's harmless, Marler said in a phone interview. However, a strain that appeared a number of years ago, E. coli 0157:H7, can be deadly.

Found in the intestines and feces of cattle, this bacteria can contaminate meat, he said.

After a major outbreak of E. coli 0157:H7 in the early 1990s, the federal government moved to regulate the meat industry but only partially succeeded, he said. A compromise was made, involving the "intact cut of meat rule."

According to this rule, he said, hamburger can't be sold if it contains E. coli 0157:H7. But so-called "intact cuts" of meat, such as tri-tip, can be sold containing the bacteria. The rationale for the rule is that hamburger will be squeezed into patties, and contaminated meat on the outside might end up in the middle of the burger, where it might not be cooked long enough to kill any bacteria. But with solid meat, the thinking goes, any bacteria will remain on the outside and definitely be killed in cooking.

In fact, things don't work that way, Marler said, because some intact cuts get contaminated by being tenderized with needles, and some solid meat is turned into hamburger after it leaves the packing plant.

Marler said this policy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is "indefensible" and must be changed. But change seems unlikely because the beef industry's lobby is so powerful, he added. Shannon Kelley, a spokesperson for the California Beef Council, said her industry has many safeguards at the production level and promotes cooking guidelines to ensure safety. Unfortunately, consumers don't always follow the guidelines, she said.

Dr. Mark Lundberg, Butte County health officer, said he hoped to have final results this week of lab tests on human specimens and on leftover food from the Forest Ranch event.

Four of the 27 victims of the outbreak got so sick they were hospitalized. A young girl who was flown to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento for treatment, is now back at home, he said.

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After spending ten days in the hospital, doctors finally gave her the go-ahead Sunday night to come home.

Her parents tell Action News Olyvia still has a long road to recovery. Her platelet count is increasing rapidly, but there are still toxins in her body. It could take several weeks before her parents know if there will be permanent damage. If you would like to help the family with medical expenses, you can donate to the Olyvia Titus Medical Fund at any Tri-Counties Bank. ]]>

The lettuce, distributed nationally by Detroit-based vendor Aunt Mid's Produce Co., is being linked to 26 cases in Michigan, as well as illnesses in Illinois, New York, Ohio and Oregon.

"Even though the investigation is ongoing, available evidence is strongly pointing to iceberg lettuce," said Dr. Gregory Holzman, chief medical executive for the Michigan Department of Community Health.

His agency issued a public health alert Friday afternoon as a precautionary measure. It says the recent E. coli illnesses are thought to be associated with bagged, industrial-sized packages of iceberg lettuce sold to restaurants and institutions.

There is no evidence the bagged lettuce at grocery stores is affected. Other distributing outlets could be identified, officials said, and product trace-back and additional test results are still in progress.

The news came the same day that a government report outlined the Food and Drug Administration's problems in keeping up with its food safety enforcement mandates.

The report by Government Accountability Office investigators said the FDA's efforts to combat food-borne illness are hampered by infrequent inspections and poor enforcement at fresh produce processing plants.

Stricter growing standards

But a Food and Drug Administration official said Friday that the nation's fresh produce would be safer if U.S. farmers were required to adopt strict standards for growing leafy greens similar to industry-written ones devised for California growers.

Dr. David Acheson said the FDA would need authority from Congress to enact "preventative controls" over production of the nation's fresh produce like those it has in place for seafood and fresh juice.

"Having Congress give us explicit authority makes it a much more robust approach and gives more chance of success," said Acheson, the commissioner for foods.

He said the FDA agreed with many of the findings of the report and began addressing them before it was published. Acheson said in a written statement Friday that at least two of the GAO's recommendations, including giving the agency enhanced access to food records during emergencies, are included in the FDA's 10-month-old Food Protection Plan. The strategy to protect food from intentional and unintentional contamination also involves more closely working with states' departments of food and agriculture.

"FDA will soon be awarding grants to states to further food and feed safety," said Acheson, adding that it is "one of the many steps we are taking to transform food protection."

The 59-page report, drafted as salmonella sickened 1,300 people in 43 states over the summer, cited previously unpublished FDA figures showing that 14 people died and 10,253 were sickened in 96 outbreaks associated with fresh produce from 1996 through 2006.

The report said the FDA delayed implementing safety measures for the fast-growing bagged produce market because of its focus on counterterrorism and investigations into the outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. The result, the report said, will be a six-year delay in fresh-cut produce guidelines.

The FDA has focused its testing efforts on pesticide residue, rather than microbial contamination such as E. coli. In 2007, 82 percent of all produce samples underwent pesticide testing, while 18 percent were tested for microbial contamination.

Defense of industry measures

The cut produce industry is funding studies into potential causes of contamination, especially in leafy greens. New FDA studies on potential wildlife transmission of E. coli to leafy greens are still two years from completion.

After the E.coli outbreak, California growers and processors wrote their own guidelines for production to avoid further loss in consumer confidence. Enforced by inspectors from the California Department of Food and Agriculture, it sets buffer zones around fields to reduce the risk of feces contamination from wildlife and establishes a safe distance between produce and cattle grazing operations and feedlots.

On Friday, California Leafy Greens Handler Marketing Agreement CEO Scott Horsfall hadn't had an opportunity to read the report but defended the leafy greens industry's measures to guarantee a safe food supply and said the call for more regulation doesn't take into account the measures already being enforced.

"There's a lot that's been done in the last two years to move the goal of food safety further down the field," he said. "We've done a lot to raise the bar on food safety."

The voluntary compliance program, which establishes a checklist of good agricultural practices, has been adopted by 99 percent of the leafy greens producers in California, he said, and while it was created by the industry, the program is audited by government agents.

Local safety efforts

Salinas Mayor Dennis Donohue, president of the Grower-Shipper Association of the Central Coast, criticized the implication that government intervention is the best way to ensure a safe food supply, particularly in an era where the FDA is grossly understaffed to handle its workload.

"I find it ironic that people value the role of the government when it suits their purpose, and devalue it when it doesn't," he said. "Would this be the same FDA that was categorically wrong about the whole tomato situation? What I don't like about the report is that there's an inference that if the FDA were more involved, things would be better."

He said the FDA's limited resources are most needed in the inspection of products imported by non-American firms that have less stringent food safety programs than domestic companies.

"When it comes to the Salinas Valley and what we do, I would contend that it's fundamentally unnecessary," he said. "Our industry aggressively responded because we understood it was in our best interest and the right thing to do."

In addition to the Leafy Greens Handler Marketing Agreement, Donohue said, the strict safety mandates of third-party buyers, including the big grocery chains and the restaurant industry, add an additional layer of audits upon the industry.

"I wouldn't want to downplay the role of government in any way," he said, "but you have to be realistic about available resources, where the needs are, because every level of government has to make choices." ]]>

The findings have led investigators to believe that the patients all got ill from ingesting the same contaminated food source.

"The problem is that we still don't know what the source is," said James McCurtis, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Community Health.

Within the last two weeks, 27 students at MSU fell ill with bloody diarrhea, including seven who needed to be hospitalized. Stool samples in eight of the patients showed that E. coli 0157:H7 was the culprit. It's a common, yet dangerous strain that killed several children in 1993 after they ate undercooked hamburgers at Jack in the Box restaurants.

Health investigators centered their food-history investigation at MSU's east complex dorms -- Akers, Holmes, Hubbard and McDonel halls -- where the majority of the students with confirmed E. coli sickness live, said Dr. Dean G. Sienko, director of the Ingham County Health Department.

However, knowing that the cases are linked to others statewide may mean the contaminated food was distributedly widely.

Lab test results, called DNA fingerprinting, for three MSU students matched those of patients who became sick from E. coli in Washtenaw, St. Clair, Wayne and Lenawee counties since Sept. 8, McCurtis said. The Washtenaw County case was a U-M student and the five in Lenawee County were inmates in the jail, McCurtis said. Details were unavailable on the cases in St. Clair and Wayne counties.

Investigators are continuing with detailed interviews to figure out what the MSU students ate. It's a complex process, Sienko said, that involves comparing their food histories to those of a sample population of well students.

All the MSU students have since been released from the hospital. The university has remained in close contact with its food vendors to assure safety of the food supply, MSU leaders say. No university dining halls have needed to close.

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Public Health officials have been investigating the E. coli O157 outbreak in the County since early last week when it became clear that there was an abnormal amount of individuals becoming ill from E. coli.

The outbreak is linked to an event held in Forest Ranch on Sept. 6 from noon to 6 p.m. The fundraiser event was for the Forest Ranch Volunteer Fire Department.

According to Public Health officials, tri-tip served at the event appears to be the cause for the outbreak of the bacteria; however, it is still unclear how the meat became contaminated.

Right now Public Health officials are working to prevent further cases. Anyone who attended this event and became ill should see their primary care physician and contact BCPHD at (530) 891-2732 (during business hours).

If the ill individual works in a high-risk occupation, he or she is asked to stop working until cleared to return to work by BCPHD. High-risk occupations include food handlers, those who care for children and those who give patient care.

E. coli O157 is a potentially deadly bacterium that can cause bloody diarrhea, dehydration, and in the most severe cases, kidney failure. The very young, seniors and persons with weak immune systems are

most susceptible to this illness, but even healthy people can become very sick.

If you attended the Sept. 6 event and have any symptoms or are concerned that you may be ill, please contact your physician immediately and report your illness to BCPHD at (530) 891-2732. ]]>

Baby milk powder spiked with the industrial chemical melamine has sickened 53,000 infants and killed four. Millions of Chinese parents are scratching their heads over which formulas are safe. The dairy industry has been brought to its knees, as the government overhauls the milk collection system and identifies where in the supply chain the melamine was added.

Lawyer Bill Marler, who has represented clients in some of the largest food-safety cases in the United States, says this latest food scare will inevitably do further harm to the "made in China" brand abroad.

"Clearly, you have to think about things from a moral perspective. There are [53,000] children sick," said Marler. "But you also think about it from an economic perspective. If this product had gotten into the United States, it would have been 'game over' for a lot of products in China."

Marler was invited to share his expertise at a food-safety conference that had been scheduled before the tainted milk was discovered. Several government officials scheduled to attend did not show up at the opening session, including the head of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine Li Changqiang. He resigned Monday as the recalls spread to include liquid milk and other products made by the country's largest dairy companies. The baby formula scandal has taken center stage at the conference.

"It somewhat surprised me," said Marler. "Every Chinese speaker at the conference spoke about the crisis. I thought it would be avoided."

Xiang Yuzhang, the nation's chief quality inspector, told The Associated Press at the sidelines of the conference that the problem was "more or less" under control.

"At present, there is basically no melamine problem in the Chinese market," said Xiang. "As far as I know, there will be no more bad news."

But there has already been enough bad news that mothers such as Joy Jia are skittish about what is safe on Chinese grocery shelves. Jia had been feeding her two children, 9 months and 3 years old, yogurt from one of the companies implicated for selling tainted milk.

"I've started to question every product around us," said Jia. "Is the formula safe? Is the yogurt safe? … It is affecting my daily life."

Tests have shown that several of China's largest dairy companies sold products tainted with melamine.

Sanlu, the company whose baby formula is believed to have sickened most of the ill infants, is now accused of covering up the problem for months, along with local government officials.

China's state-owned Xinhua news agency has reported that Sanlu began receiving complaints about sick infants as far back as December 2007. According to Xinhua, Sanlu didn't begin testing for melamine until June 2008.

After the presence of the contaminant was found, Sanlu reported the results to the government of Shijiazhuang on Aug. 2. Officials didn't take public action until six weeks later when the recall was reported in Chinese media.

"It's clear that this formula issue was kept quiet for awhile during the Olympics," said Marler. "Obviously it's a big deal and would have been an international black eye."

The Chinese government has taken control of Sanlu, and according to Xinhua, one of the company's leaders has been arrested on criminal charges related to the milk contamination. Sanlu's Web site is down.

During a news briefing reported by the AP, the chief executive of the company's New Zealand partner, Fonterra, said that there's "no indication" the company lied about when it first heard of the problems but that "the [Sanlu] brand cannot be reconstructed."

Speaking to an audience in New York, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao sought to offer reassurances that "China will fundamentally improve its product quality and food safety."

But such reassurances have been offered before.

It was only a year ago that the same substance, melamine, killed dozens of dogs and cats in the United States. It had been found in pet food imported from China.

Government officials have placed blame for the tainted baby formula on milk dealers who collect raw milk from small dairy farms and sell it to companies. It is believed that these dealers, desperate to make a buck with substandard milk, watered down the milk and added melamine to make it appear higher in protein.

Twelve countries in Asia and Africa have placed some form of a ban on Chinese dairy products, including candies, chocolates, coffee drinks and other products that contain some form of milk.

Marler says that food-quality problems are also common in the United States, but that in China, which lacks a free press and transparency in government, the problems are exacerbated.

"Regulation is still required," said Marler. "But I think the transparency, when you have the ability for the media to get at issues quicker so companies are forced to make decisions sooner, when consumers know they have rights by taking a company to court and getting compensation, that can change the economic dynamic."

The central government has fired a slew of officials and company heads have been forced to step down. But many say that the baby formula scandal is an example of how China's regulatory bodies have not kept step with its runaway capitalism. As a result, tens of thousands of babies are paying the price.

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Butte County health officials said Friday they hope to learn why the tri-tip was contaminated. Butte County Health Officer Dr. Mark Lundberg said so far as he knows, 18 people have become sick including four who were hospitalized. He said more cases of illness may be discovered.

Of the four people who were hospitalized, two remain in the hospital, including a 6-year-old girl who was airlifted to UC Davis Medical Center, Lundberg said. He didn't have information on the girl's condition.

The health officer called the incident the worst outbreak of food-borne illness he'd seen in the 12 years he has worked for Butte County.

On Sept. 6, several hundred people attended a fundraiser in Forest Ranch to benefit the community's volunteer fire department. This week, health officials learned that some people got cramps and severe diarrhea after eating food at the event.

It was found the illness was caused by a dangerous strain of bacteria known as E. coli 0157.

Lundberg and other county health officials held a news conference Friday to report the latest on the outbreak.

A memo distributed to reporters stated in part, "Some people, especially children under 5 and the elderly, can become very sick from E. coli 0157. The infection damages their red blood cells and their kidneys. This only happens to about one out of 50 people, but it is very serious. Without hospital care, they can die."

E. coli bacteria is found in the intestines of animals. It can turn up in cow manure and can be on the udders of cows. Sometimes it has gotten into water and spread from cattle operations to vegetable farms. People who eat contaminated food may get sick, and they can spread the bacteria in their feces.

How did the tri-tip served in Forest Ranch get contaminated? Lundberg said there are many possibilities. E. coli bacteria could have been in the meat when it was purchased. Or it could have come off of cutting boards the meat was placed on. Or it could have been on the hands of people who prepared and served the tri-tip.

There are good ways to protect yourself against being poisoned by E. coli bacteria, Lundberg said. Use a meat thermometer and make sure the meat is cooked long enough to reach temperatures that will kill any bacteria it might contain. For meat like tri-tip, it should get to 145 degrees, he said. Hamburger should reach 165 degrees.

Food that is to be eaten raw, like fruit and vegetables, should be rinsed thoroughly.

It's also essential to wash your hands thoroughly after going to the bathroom and before preparing food.

The health officials said groups that plan to put on events where food will be served should contact the Public Health Department to obtain free information on proper methods of preparing meals.

The department's phone numbers are 891-2732 and 538-7581.

Lundberg said events like the one in Forest Ranch have many benefits and ought to be encouraged. But it's essential, he said, that organizers follow correct guidelines for preparing food safely.

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The little girl, who is a first grade student at Forest Ranch Charter School, has been closely monitored by doctors at U.C. Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. She was taken there by helicopter last Thursday from Enloe Hospital in Chico.

On Monday, Olyvia underwent a four-hour blood transfusion in an effort to get her kidneys functioning properly again. Her grandmother says Olyvia is too weak to hold a crayon or lift her head.

Besides the emotional toll Olyvia's illness is putting on her family, it's also devastating them financially.

The family is currently working on setting up an account to accept to donations to offset the costs associated with Olyvia's medical care.

Meanwhile, the food served at the September 6th event is being tested by the state health department.

Investigators say the E.coli came from the tri-tip sandwiches. But they don't know exactly where the contamination originated. Officials say there are plenty of critical points where contamination could've occurred.

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Investigators stress they have not honed in on a particular food or source of food — only that “they’re focusing on food from off-campus and delivered to campus,” Marcus Cheatham, spokesman of the Ingham County Health Department, said earlier today.

Lab tests have confirmed seven of more than 30 possible cases as an infection by E. coli 0157:H7, a possibly-deadly strain especially for the elderly and young children. Sixteen of the 30 remain “probable cases” as investigators await lab results. Others have been ruled out.

The MSU students are expected to fully recuperate, health officials have said.

The outbreak seems to have been confined. No new cases that were ultimately confirmed have been reported since Sept. 13. Though the last possible case was reported on the 18th, several of the latter cases have been ruled out, Cheatham said.

The department continues interviewing students and waiting for results from stool samples from some of several of students who either sought medical treatment or called the health department to report gastrointestinal problems after MSU officials e-mailed students last week to alert them to the E. coli outbreak.

The interviewing is tedious because investigators are asking students to recall the details of what they ate more than a week ago.

“It’s ‘Did you have lettuce on that grinder?’” Cheatham said, stressing that investigators have not yet honed in on a particular food or condiment. “It’s sort of gumshoe work at this point,” he said.

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The official, Li Changjiang, is the most senior government official to lose his job in the scandal. His resignation was announced Monday evening, as the government widened its investigation into how an industrial chemical contaminated powdered baby formula and milk products made by some of the country’s biggest dairy companies.

It is one of the nation’s worst food safety scandals in memory, exceeding the troubles of a year ago when China was found to have exported tainted pet food ingredients, toothpaste, seafood and dangerous lead-contaminated toys.

The government has already arrested 19 people suspected of intentionally spiking milk supplies with melamine, an industrial chemical made from coal that is normally used in the production of plastics and fertilizer.

It is poisonous when ingested and is banned from food production. But unscrupulous milk dealers here may have added melamine to watered-down milk to artificially inflate protein counts, officials say.

Compounding the problem was a chain of neglect and a possible cover-up. The Sanlu Group, China’s largest producer of powdered baby formula, received complaints months ago about suspected problems, but the company waited until Aug. 2 to tell local authorities, who waited until Sept. 9 to tell provincial authorities, the provincial officials said.

Sanlu finally recalled 700 tons of the formula on Sept. 11. Government testing then turned up tainted samples of powdered formula at 21 other companies, and the scandal exploded.

Now, with tens of thousands of babies ill, more than 10,000 hospitalized, and state media reporting a fourth death, worried parents have been rushing to hospitals around the country to have their children checked for kidney damage, and dairy executives are scrambling to save their companies, promising to compensate victims and overhaul their product safety tests.

Millions of gallons of dairy products have been recalled in Hong Kong, elsewhere in China, and in Taiwan, Singapore and other countries, devastating China’s fast-growing $18 billion dairy industry. The government fired the head of one large dairy company, and on Monday, fired the Communist Party chief in the city of Shijiazhuang, home of one of the dairy companies at the center of the scandal.

China’s dairy products are not approved for export to the United States.

For years, Beijing backed a national health campaign to encourage children to drink more milk. Now it is trying to demonstrate its commitment to food safety.

Over the weekend, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and Li Keqiang, a member of the Politburo, visited hospitals and supermarkets.

China started a national food safety campaign last year, after melamine-tainted pet food ingredients it exported sickened cats and dogs in the United States, some fatally. Substandard factories were closed, and safe food supplies were pledged for the Olympic Games this year. In July 2007, the head of the State Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, was executed for corruption and dereliction of duty.

But now, there are questions on why consumer complaints about the tainted milk took months to surface — emerging only after the Olympics were over — and whether dairy officials and government officials conspired to cover up the details.

The Fonterra Group, a New Zealand dairy giant, says it was aware in August of problem milk made by Sanlu, its Chinese partner, weeks before it was made public in China, and Fonterra officials pressed China to release more information.

International health experts are now assessing the situation.

“We’re discussing this with the government,” said Hans Troedsson, chief China representative of the World Health Organization. “They are investigating how these delays have occurred. It’s important to know so we can prevent this in the future.”

Beijing seems to be reacting more swiftly this year and has allowed extensive media coverage of the milk scandal.

Still, some analysts are wondering how milk contamination could have been so widespread, affecting the country’s top brands — Mengniu, Yili and Sanlu — given the government’s pledges and its food safety campaign, and why melamine was again the agent.

Mr. Li, as chief of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, was one of the officials in charge of monitoring the nation’s food and product safety.

Last year, Mr. Li was a strong advocate for more testing and inspections of products made in China. He often defended the quality of Chinese goods and criticized the Western media and American businessmen, saying they had exaggerated the country’s product-quality problems.

His resignation was announced Monday in a brief statement through Xinhua, which said he would be replaced by his deputy, Wang Yong.

Xinhua said the State Council, one of Beijing’s powerful ruling bodies, called the milk scandal a “severe food safety incident” and cited a recent law requiring the removal of top officials who fail to fulfill their duties or cause severe accidents that are deemed avoidable ]]>

More than 30 years ago, three Girl Scouts were killed at a camp near here, brutal and still unsolved murders that stunned the country.

Last Christmas, an elderly couple — known for giving away food and clothes to the needy — were found shot to death south of town, and their killers remain at large.

Today, the blue-collar community of 1, 500 is dealing with another tragedy that may never be solved, an E. coli outbreak that killed one man and sickened more than 300 adults and children.

Chad Ingle, a 26-year-old bank teller and newlywed in the nearby town of Pryor, died. Several young children needed dialysis after the August outbreak, and some patients are still in intensive care.

The spread of the rare E. coli strain, 0111, became the largest in the nation’s history. Since laboratory tests are geared more toward detecting illness caused by E. coli 0157, it is difficult to tell how widespread 0111 infections have been nationally, medical experts say.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Dr. Mark Rowland, medical director of epidemiology for Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa, which treated and tested 220 of the patients. “It seemed like this just kind of exploded.

“ It’s surprising we haven’t had more deaths. I’m going to knock on wood.” The first confirmed cases of E. coli 0111 began Aug. 15, and most of the cases occurred within that week. The last reported illness came on Sept. 6.

During the month-long scare, restaurants in town were nearly empty, and residents made runs on bottled water as rumors spread that the problem originated in the town’s water supply, proven false by state tests of samples.

At the center of the outbreak: the Country Cottage restaurant, a buffet-style eatery off the main drag that drew hundreds of customers each week and doubled as an economic engine for Locust Grove, employing about 60. It was famous for stick-to-your-ribs dishes like chicken-fried steak, catfish and homemade rolls.

The link shocked many in town who saw the Cottage as the lifeblood of this community.

In its 22-year existence, it turned into an institution: Whether you were leaving Sunday church, celebrating an anniversary or running for public office around here, chances are, you came to the Cottage.

But even though the Oklahoma Health Department connected the outbreak to the restaurant, officials still have been unable to pinpoint the origin of the E. coli, even after interviewing more than 1, 800 people.

Food samples taken from the restaurant revealed no signs of contamination, but it’s possible the tainted food had already been thrown out. This week, officials announced the outbreak had ended. The investigation continues.

Dr. Kristy Bradley, state epidemiologist, said it’s possible officials won’t ever be able to know how the bacteria got into the restaurant.

“Unless the ‘outbreak gods’ shine on us, we likely won’t be able to say with certainty,” she said.

Meanwhile, with the Cottage closed, the small town about 50 miles east of Tulsa is out its third-largest employer, behind the schools and a welding company.

About 1, 000 residents have signed a petition to keep the place open. Some close to its owners, Dale and Linda Moore, describe them as “devastated” over the victims of the outbreak.

For their part, the Moores have managed to keep a low profile in a town where everybody’s business is common knowledge, refusing numerous requests for interviews through a family representative.

“It’s going to be tough for them either way, even if... they are exonerated,” said Shawn Bates, the town’s mayor. “It’s hard for them to come back just because of the hits they’ve taken.” If the place opens soon, the wounds appear still too fresh for some.

“It’s easy for people to say, ‘let’s open up,’ but when you see your own family in [the hospital ], it really hits home,” says resident Sandra Ballou, whose 19-monthold niece became violently ill after eating at the Cottage and had to be hospitalized. “It’s almost like being between a rock and a hard place.” Ballou says she won’t ever eat again at the Cottage, and has sworn off buffets.

But the restaurant has plenty of staunch defenders, each offering up theories of how the illness broke out.

“I don’t even think it came from here,” says Steve Bell, chomping on the last bits of a breakfast sandwich at Cook’s, a downtown diner. “All those vegetables and stuff, maybe something came in.” Bell defends the Moores, and trains his anger at the news media.

“Bad news travels faster than good news,” he says. “If this had happened in Tulsa, it would’ve blown over, but it’s a small town.” “When it’s on CNN, it’s pretty deep,” restaurant worker Rose Miller chimes in, breezing past the counter to refill coffee.

At Elaine’s Beauty and Barber down the street, Nathan Knott gets a trim, and grumbles about the place still being closed.

He’s eaten there every day, six days a week — the Cottage is closed Mondays — and says he’d be first in line if it ever reopened.

“I’ve been in 43 different countries and eaten every kind of food you can imagine, but the very best food is here,” Knott says.

He rattles off some of his favorites: mashed potatoes and gravy, pork chops, blueberry hot cakes.

He thinks the contamination came by one of the restaurant’s distributors, maybe a bad frozen chicken-fried steak.

Resident Alice Saffell, who works at a flower shop on Main Street, blames a customer with dirty hands who might have tainted the buffet.

“The cowboys come in from the arena, from roping, from bull riding, they come in, drink a big glass of tea, go right to the buffet,” she says. “I’ve seen lots of mothers come in with babies, they don’t ever go wash their hands, and maybe they’ve changed diapers just before they’ve come in.” As the town notches another unsolved tragedy in its history, some residents wonder if this place can ever escape its streak of bad luck.

“So many things have happened, it just makes you wonder,” Ballou says. “I know it’s all negative, but I know that good things can come out of negative things. It’s how a person looks at it.”

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Still, the infection seems to have been contained. No one has gotten sick since Thursday, said Dr. Dean Sienko, director of the Ingham County Health Department.

Late Tuesday afternoon, the East Lansing school e-mailed students, advising them to seek treatment and contact the health department if they'd been sick in the past week with "gastrointestinal symptoms ... especially bloody diarrhea."

Just hours earlier, the health department was notified that lab tests had confirmed the strain as E. coli 0157:H7.

The infected MSU students may represent a fraction of those infected, Sienko said.

"Typically, what you see is the tip of the iceberg. There are more people who don't get that sick or don't seek medical attention for whatever reason," he said. "Those people are under our radar screen."

Additional information may help investigators pinpoint the outbreak's source, but that could take days because it requires meticulous interviewing of the students, several of whom remain hospitalized, Sienko said.

"I look at these things two ways -- is there an ongoing public health threat? I have no evidence this is the case. Now, we have to determine what went wrong," Sienko said.

Both he and the university's chief physician, Beth Alexander, cautioned against rushing to judgment. The infected students all lived on campus, "but people don't always eat on campus," Alexander said.

Students are going about their daily business, said Chris Kulesza, 20, of Troy, chairman of MSU's Academic Assembly.

Many just learned about the outbreak Monday or Tuesday, and most feel the scare by then was contained, he said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate this strain of E. coli infects 70,000 people a year, killing about 60, mostly young children and elderly people. It comes from a variety of sources such as undercooked meat and vegetables that have been watered by a contaminated source.

In 1993, investigators linked an E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak that resulted in four deaths and hundreds of infections to tainted meat at Jack in the Box restaurants.

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The E. coli O111 outbreak in northeastern Oklahoma is over, but the investigation isn't, state health officials said Tuesday.

"We've turned a corner," said Leslea Bennett-Webb, Oklahoma State Department of Health spokeswoman. "We're still investigating. But we really wanted the folks in Locust Grove to know that it's over, so maybe they can get back to normal."

State officials also wanted to assure Locust Grove residents that the outbreak was associated only with the Country Cottage restaurant.

"We've taken this so very serious because we had one death and so many people seriously ill, and a community that has been fearful," Bennett-Webb said. "It's been a challenge."

The last known person associated with the outbreak fell ill Sept. 6, she said.

"We may find new cases that haven't been reported, but there are no new occurrences," Bennett-Webb said.

At least 314 people were sickened from E. coli O111, a rare and virulent strain of the bacteria, officials said. One man died from the illness.

"We know with absolute certainty this is the largest E. coli O111 outbreak ever in the U.S.," Bennett-Webb said.

Sixty-five children were sickened and 72 people were hospitalized. Seventeen people received kidney dialysis, officials said.

State health investigators have interviewed 1,843 people as part of its investigation. All known cases were associated with the Country Cottage restaurant in Locust Grove, officials said.

"Virtually all known cases ate at or had an association with Country Cottage," Bennett-Webb said.

So far, only one case of secondary infection through household contact with someone who had eaten at the restaurant has been confirmed, she said.

"We are investigating the incubation period of a few more cases to determine if they might also be secondary infections," Bennett-Webb said.

Officials are continuing their investigation as to the exact food source that caused the outbreak. A team of three officials from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to return to Atlanta over the next few days and will continue to help state officials with the case.

"We're still looking at food choice selections based on those more than 1,800 interviews," Bennett-Webb said. "We're looking at dates and food choices for those who got sick versus those who didn't."

The information from all the interviews are entered into a database, and analysis of those interviews could take several weeks, she said.

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Cheryl's husband Brian almost died from Salmonella st paul and she was frustrated; Cheryl believed it was her civic duty to warn her community but nobody gave her direction. "Was I supposed to supply the media with documentation, was I even supposed to talk to them?" she asks. "I guess anyone could call a reporter and say, 'Hey I got salmonella poisoning at Denny's, or even some restaurant they have a gripe about. And at this time we'd heard that salmonella poisoning had only come from restaurants, not from buying tomatoes or peppers at the local grocery store or in our case, jalapenos from Wal-Mart.

"And the amount of time it took was frustrating. The hospital where Brian was admitted had sent his medical records to Denver and the reason everything was taking so long was because originally they had gone to Santa Fe. If you don't know this area, I should explain: We are in the 'Four Corners' area—which means the four states come together. That can add to confusion but being local, you kind of know that. However, if there is a nationwide outbreak of salmonella, it shouldn't be state to state, it should be mile-to-mile. For example, an outbreak in New Mexico could mean next door for us: in other words, salmonella has no borders.

If we had an outbreak in Farmington, New Mexico, that would be more alarming than having it in Denver, Colorado. The hospital we went to was Shiprock, which is on Native American land (my husband is Cherokee), and that caused further confusion—even though the hospital knows we live in Dolores, Colorado, they still sent his records to Santa Fe.

And all this time we were still thinking that tomatoes caused the outbreak—Brian had eaten a tomato sandwich a few days prior to getting sick. When I called Denver to find out the test results, they said it was positive for salmonella. 'We will send you a copy of the report when we get a notarized letter, signed by your husband,' the administrator said. More time, and nobody seemed to be doing anything. That is when I called attorney Bill Marler and he got involved right away. Marler didn’t know what kind of salmonella Brian was suffering from but I assured him that I would send him the report asap.

Right away, his law firm sent me a package—a contract allowing them to represent us. At that point we didn't know that there would be a class action lawsuit. All we knew a few days later was that we had the report confirming salmonella st paul and Brian's stool sample matched the jalapeno pepper sample.

I called Marler as soon as I had the report and he said we probably have a case. Marler wanted to know where I bought the peppers and did I have a receipt. Yes, I still had the receipt from Wal-Mart. Next, the law firm got a Colorado attorney involved and that's where it stands now.

It never crossed my mind that we would get involved in a lawsuit; at the time I was caught up in my husband's welfare and the lack of community awareness; I felt it was my duty to not only protect my family, but also to protect this small community. At the same time, I believe that Wal-Mart was negligent; they sold jalapeno peppers after the warning of a potential link to the outbreak."

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One person has died, and 43 victims are children. Sixty-one people have been hospitalized with 16 getting dialysis treatment of kidney failure that's associated with severe cases of the food-borne bacterial illnesses.

Based on numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that makes the rare E. coli O111 outbreak in Oklahoma the largest of its type in national history.

The state Health Department says many of those who have become ill ate at Locust Grove's Country Cottage restaurant between Aug. 15 and 17.

The department is conducting an investigation into the exact source of the outbreak, with help from three CDC employees.

Country Cottage has remained closed since the outbreak was made public on Aug. 25. It is unclear if it will re-open.

Some of the outbreak's victims remained hospitalized with signs of organ failure. Medical professionals say organ damage associated with severe bacterial illnesses can be permanent.

E. coli is a group of bacteria, some of which produce toxins that are harmful to people. The bacteria are usually associated with the feces of animals. Victims of the Oklahoma outbreak have become sick with bloody diarrhea, vomiting and severe stomach cramps.

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Cheryl is also hopping mad wondering how many others got sick. "Many people around here can't even afford a doctor," she says. "We have three grocery stores where I live and Wal-Mart, being the biggest and cheapest, has always been the store of choice. And around here, our economy is low. But I won't be shopping at Wal-Mart anymore."

Some people have inferred that the Grubbs family is trying to "make a quick buck" from this lawsuit, but Cheryl believes that someone has to be accountable. Brian Grubbs is lucky to be alive today.

"We were having a big picnic in the mountains and purchased about 30 jalapeno peppers at Wal-Mart," says Cheryl. "Our family eats them like apples—it’s a southwest kind of thing. My intention was to make stuffed jalapenos but we got too busy, so over a three-day event, some of us ate raw peppers and others ate them barbecued. I took the rest home and put them in the fridge and during the week my husband continued to eat them with his meals.

Late in the evening on July 3rd Brian got sick. He was feverish, vomiting, and aching all over and figured he got some kind of bug, maybe a cold. But I was concerned because he never gets sick and has an iron stomach. The next day Brian went to work but by 10am he called and said he was too sick to work. We have a catering service and had a big job for July 4th weekend. Poor Brian; he was either sitting in his pickup, directing our helpers, or on the toilet. I brought him Imodium, Gatorade, water and Tylenol and tried to make him comfortable but nothing worked.

I took him home that day around 6pm and he continued to be sick throughout the night. And he was exhausted. I noticed his weight had gone down and he had dark circles around his eyes, but Brian thought he might get better. Not so: it got to the point where he couldn't eat or drink. Typical man, he still didn't want to see the doctor. And the doctor is about 60 miles away so it was time consuming and financially a problem. And Brian didn't want to be an imposition—he just needed a quiet day at home to heal.

I woke around 6am Sunday morning and Brian asked me to take him to the hospital. That woke me right up! 'Look at my mouth', he said. His gums, the roof of his mouth and tongue were black. I was absolutely terrified but tried to remain composed for our 15-year-old son. My sister--who was visiting us--was so terrified she packed up and went back to California, fearing it was contagious. (She is in the medical field and told me afterwards when that happens, you usually die.)

On our way to hospital Brian told me he prayed all night that he would wake in the morning. He was scared too. When we got there, I had to get a wheelchair—Brian couldn't even stand up. The first thing they asked was if Brian had eaten any tomatoes. I found out later that they had seen several cases of salmonella, so Brian wasn't the first case. But he was sick weeks after the tomato scare and we hadn't bought any tomatoes until we heard that the outbreak was over. How could he have salmonella poisoning?

As well, we were led to believe from the media that the salmonella outbreak was coming from restaurants, not from local markets—we hadn't eaten in any restaurants.

Brian lost about 14 lbs in four days, but the main concern was his kidneys. Brian had a disease 20 years ago that left him with the function of one kidney and now his creatinine level (that indicates kidney function) had jumped up over a point and that was very dangerous. His internal organs were beginning to shut down, including his liver. The doctor also said, because of the stress his body was under, Brian was lucky he didn't have a stroke or heart attack. He is our number one man and this was not good--he has kids and grandkids.

They immediately started hydrating him and at home he was put on a special diet of clear liquids and lots of water. At this point we didn't know the jalapenos were contaminated and we still had some in the fridge!

The next day the hospital called to tell us he had salmonella that was off the charts and that I needed to go back to the hospital immediately to get his medicine.

Next I called my local health department and tried to get the word out that we had salmonella here in town. All I got was someone's voice mail and that made me furious. We live in a small community and nobody was paying attention. Nearby Weld County had posted a salmonella outbreak online so why wouldn't we have our area posted online? I was trying to do research to find out what to do, to protect my family and do my civic duty. I have babies here—what if they had eaten the jalapenos?

Three days later I got a call from a woman at Grand Junction Health Department about 120 miles away, saying she 'heard a rumor' about someone with salmonella. Rumor my ass! Then I got a call from the head nurse at our local health department: she apologized because her staff didn’t handle this correctly. After going through all these channels, whose duty is it to report salmonella? Is it mine, do I call the newspaper, who is responsible for this?

The county nurse told me to bring any tomatoes, jalapenos, onions, cilantro and tortillas and she would have them sent to Denver to be checked. I did have jalapenos, onions and tortillas.

I called Denver again and found out Brian's stool sample and the peppers had the same DNA fingerprint for Salmonella saint paul. That was the first time we heard about the peppers. By now it was July 24th and I had reported to them on the 7th!

At this point I was furious with the health department. Why do we pay taxes? Homeland security is scamming us. Where is the FDA? Where are people who are supposed to be helping us? My blood was boiling…I went online and typed "lawyers, salmonella." I need someone to help us and Marler Clark law firm came up. I sent everything to Bill Marler.

On July 29th our local newspaper printed an article about Brian's sickness and that he had contracted salmonella.

Brian went back to the doctor. Although his creatinine level was down, he didn't know of potential long-term effects. To this day Brian has a sensitive stomach and he can't tolerate anything spicy—definitely no jalapenos. He is still fatigued and hasn't gained his weight back. And it has taken an emotional toll: he is not the same man, having the idea of leaving his family has effected him. How many years has this taken off his life? Now anger is setting in."

On September 16th, Cheryl Grubbs will discuss their jalapeno salmonella lawsuit with LawyersandSettlements.

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At least 200 people became sick and one person died in connection with the outbreak, which the Oklahoma State Department of Health believes began at the Country Cottage buffet restaurant in Locust Grove.

Lawyer Bill Marler of Marler Clark in Seattle said his firm has been retained by seven families who may want to sue over the rare E. coli O111 outbreak.

Marler, who has been involved in several food-borne illness cases, said his firm is waiting for more information about the cause of the Oklahoma outbreak before it pursues legal action, but some form of litigation is "highly likely," he said.

"At this point it would not be responsible to file a lawsuit against the restaurant without waiting to see if you can figure out exactly how this thing happened, but ultimately there's got to be a meeting of the minds and looking at how to best take care of the people who got sick," he said.

Amanda Clinton, who is acting as spokeswoman for the restaurant's owners, said she expects multiple people to file claims, partly because the attorneys have been advertising their services online to the victims.

"I would not be surprised if multiple lawsuits are filed, based on past, similar cases," Clinton said Wednesday. "If I had someone in my family who was sick, I would probably file a lawsuit too."

Clinton said she was unsure if the restaurant's owners — Dale and Linda Moore — have hired an attorney.

The state Health Department is interviewing people who ate at the restaurant to see if they ate a common food, and inspectors are testing kitchen surfaces and foods at the restaurant in search of the same rare type of E. coli that's been blamed for the illnesses.

On Tuesday, the department said buffet counters and kitchen surfaces at Country Cottage were found to be clean of any harmful bacteria.

The state sampled 17 surfaces Aug. 28 and found no harmful bacteria in any of them, said state Epidemiologist Kristy Bradley.

But most people who became sick in connection with the outbreak ate at Country Cottage between Aug. 15 and Aug. 17, she said. Surfaces at the restaurant could have been cleaned before the tests were taken.

The state is expected to release bacterial samples of the restaurant's food soon, and that may the last chance to connect the E. coli outbreak to a specific food item, Bradley said.

From there, Health Department workers will analyze interviews done with people who ate at the restaurant.

That analysis will be used to come up with percentage likelihoods that certain food items can be blamed for the illnesses, she said.

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Zachary Yost of Columbia attended camp at the Goshen Scout Reservation between July 20 and 26 and later tested positive for the bacteria, the lawsuit said. Yost ate some of the ground beef that health officials later traced to S&S Foods, of Azusa, Calif., the suit states.

More than 30 other camp attendees, mostly Northern Virginia residents, have tested positive for the bacteria, and Scout officials closed the camp, near Lexington, Va., Aug. 3 for the first time in its four-decade history.

In recent weeks, the Virginia Department of Health has been tabulating data from more than 500 surveys of camp attendees and reviewing lab tests. Although no official source of the outbreak has been identified, officials have pointed to the meat, some of which might have been insufficiently cooked by Scouts over an open fire, as the likely source of the outbreak.

In her lawsuit, filed in Rockbridge County Circuit Court, Devon Drew claimed that the company's ground beef made her son sick. Zachary suffered from bloody diarrhea, cramping, fatigue and nausea, and his family incurred medical and travel expenses as well as the loss of wages due to his illness, the lawsuit said.

Seven Maryland residents had confirmed infections, and more than 80 people in the region exhibited symptoms of the illness, health officials said. William Marler, one of the attorneys for Zachary and his mother, said that Zachary was not hospitalized but that he has been largely confined to his house since becoming sick July 26, to prevent the spread of the infection.

"It has really curtailed his activities," Marler, a Seattle food-poisoning attorney, said yesterday. "The worry is he could really transfer it to someone else. He can't go swimming. His activities with his buddies are limited."

S&S officials did not return several phone messages seeking comment.

Health officials identified the bacteria found at the camp to be a harmful strain that can infect ground beef products during the slaughtering process. It can cause inflammation of the lining of the bowels and, in extreme cases, can lead to kidney failure and death, health officials said. Antibiotics typically are not helpful, and infections are often treated by drinking fluids and taking pain relievers.

On Aug. 6, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that S&S would voluntarily recall more than 150,000 pounds of frozen ground beef after laboratory tests traced the bacteria to the beef.

Nothing else at the camp has tested positive for E. coli, including water sources, but secondary means of transmission are still being investigated, said Christopher Novak, an epidemiologist with the Virginia Department of Health.

"We're still working on it," said Novak, who added that the final report is probably still weeks away. "Because it's so diffuse, both across Virginia and [Maryland] . . . the data analysis from the survey is taking a long time."

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The Oklahoma State Department of Health said today it has determined the need to interview additional persons as part of its ongoing investigation into the source of an E. coli 0111 outbreak in northeastern Oklahoma.

“In our efforts to establish if there is an association with particular food items and illness, we will be interviewing more persons to find those who ate at the Country Cottage and did not become ill,” said State Epidemiologist Dr. Kristy Bradley. “In an investigation of this scope, it is as important to collect information on those who did not get sick as those who did become ill. We’ve determined that our statistical database does not adequately represent those who ate at the Country Cottage but did not become ill.”

Bradley said state health officials have identified about 320 persons not previously interviewed who ate at the Country Cottage Aug. 15-17, the days most persons who became ill ate at the restaurant. These newly identified persons will be contacted this weekend to see if they can recall what food items they ate and if they got sick afterward. “This information is necessary so that we can make the distinction between what might have been a popular food choice versus a valid association with illness,” Bradley explained.

The OSDH also announced today that it has invited officials from the Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Branch of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to Oklahoma to participate in the outbreak investigation.

“This outbreak is of great interest to CDC because it will add to knowledge on the range of disease that the E. coli 0111 organism can cause,” Bradley said. She said federal officials will conduct medical reviews to look at acute symptoms and complications of those who became sick due to the E. coli 0111 infection. They will also assist OSDH staff in telephone interviews. ]]>

Salmonella Typhimiriumis an organism that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people and others with weakened immune systems. Healthy persons infected with Salmonella often experience fever, diarrhea (which maybe bloody), nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. In rare circumstances, infection with Salmonella can result in the organism getting into the bloodstream and producing more severe illnesses such as arterial infections (i.e. infected aneurysms), endocarditis (swelling of the lining of the heart) and arthritis. Individuals who may have experienced any of the above symptoms after eating any of the recalled products should contact their health care provider.

The recalled sprouts were distributed in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alasks in retail stores and through wholesale produce suppliers.

The products are Sprouters Northwest brand and include all lot numbers with a best by date of 9/17/08 or earlier of: 5oz alfalfa sprout cups UPC - 033383701417, 4oz alfalfa clamshells UPC-815098001088, 1lb bags of alfalfa sprouts UPC - 079566123508, 2lb trays of alfalfa sprouts UPC – 079566123492, 5oz salad cups UPC - 033383702674, 4oz salad clamshells UPC - 815098002061, 5oz alfalfa onion sprout cups UPC - 033383701905, and 4oz onion sprout clamshells UPC – 815098002054.

Sprouters Northwest, Inc. is working closely with state officials and the Food and Drug Administration to determine the cause of this problem and what steps can be taken to combat it.

Consumers who have purchased any of these items are urged to return them to the place of purchase for a full refund. Wholesalers / retailers should remove the product from sale, cease distribution, and arrange for product return. Questions can be directed to the company at 253-872-0577.

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The meat from Azusa-based S&S Foods was intended for institutional use and food service companies, which normally supply restaurants, and wasn't sold at the retail level. Before the recall, the beef was shipped to distribution centers in Milwaukee and Allentown, Pa., according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The link to beef was discovered through an investigation by the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service and the Virginia Department of Health.

USDA spokeswoman Laura Reiser said that the department didn't know how the meat became infected and that it would be following up with S&S Foods about the source of the beef and the company's food safety measures.

At least 73 people who attended the popular camp at Goshen Scout Reservation in the Blue Ridge Mountains have reported falling ill, Virginia officials said. So far, the E. coli infection has been confirmed in one adult from Maryland and 21 children from Virginia. Eight were hospitalized.

The outbreak began between July 20 and July 26, and may have continued into the next week, health officials said.

The first week, 1,647 scouts, leaders and staff members attended the camp, with 1,310 participants the next week, according to the National Capital Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Boy Scout officials closed the camp Sunday.

Since spring 2007, more than 19,500 tons of E. coli-tainted beef have been recalled in more than 30 separate incidents, according to Seattle attorney and food safety expert William D. Marler.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health announced Monday that it was investigating six cases of E. coli that might be linked to a multi-state outbreak involving tainted meat from Nebraska Beef of Omaha. So far, at least 50 people have been sickened.

"Nobody I've talked to has any idea why we're seeing an increase, though everybody has a different theory," Marler said. "The meat industry basically has no answers. It's pretty frustrating -- there'll be some hand-wringing, a bunch of lawsuits and nothing will be done until three months later, when it all happens again."

Jeff Grohs, S&S Foods' vice president of business development, said in an e-mailed statement that the company was working "diligently to correct the situation" and to "determine whether illnesses in Virginia are connected to our operations or have some other original source or cause."

The company's parent, Idaho-based CTI Foods, has supplied precooked, frozen and fresh food products to major restaurant chains such as Taco Bell and Quiznos. In addition to S&S, CTI also operates facilities in Idaho and Texas.

The recall involves 1-pound bricks of beef that were packed into 30-pound boxes labeled with EST. 20375 inside the USDA mark of inspection. The side of each box has a printed case code beginning with 06238.

The E. coli O157:H7 strain can cause bloody diarrhea, dehydration and kidney failure and can lead to serious illness or death. Children, the elderly and people with weak immune systems are most susceptible to food-borne illnesses, according to the USDA.

Separately, Tyson Foods Inc. said Thursday that it was recalling 51,360 pounds of uncooked chicken because of a soy-based allergen that wasn't named on the label. No connected illnesses have been reported.

The meat was sent to food service companies in 29 states, including California, and was produced at Tyson's Vicksburg, Miss., location between July 23 and Aug. 5. ]]>