The Food and Drug Administration is warning people not to eat pistachios, and they’re investigating one of the largest pistachio-processing plants in the country, operated by Setton International Foods Inc. in Terra Bella, Calif.
The details are here, in a story I did this morning for FortBendNow. The bottom line is that this bears an eerie resemblance to the infamous Peanut Corporation of America cluster-fuck that resulted in hundreds of people sick from ingesting salmonella-laced products, nine related deaths and (so far) the recall of more than 3,860 food products containing peanuts.
The FDA appears to be on higher alert this time around than with the PCA mess, but they still have been aware of problems with contaminated pistachios for at least a week. However, the agency now says it’s investigating the 150,000-square-foot Terra Bella plant, Setton isn’t shipping products from it and will at some time in the future (like any minute, one hopes) issue a “voluntary recall” of about 1 million pounds of processed pistachio product.
That is a lot of pistachios, but the company says it has 60 times that much processing capacity at the plant. Watch for another major recall coming your way, because the FDA said multiple strains of salmonella have been identified in the company’s nuts so far.
At this point it’s too early to compare Setton to what appears to have been systemic criminal neglect at the PCA peanut operations, but it’s going to be hard for the Commack, N.Y., company to escape blame when it talks about itself like this:
Being in every phase of the pistachio processing value chain gives us the ability to control production from the orchard to your home. This means that we are able to adhere to the strictest quality control standards while maintaining an economical price. We begin with superior growing and harvesting techniques that rely on technology to filter out any substandard pistachios which do not meet our high standards of quality. Our roasting technique has been referred to as the “best in the industry”, culminating in the purest tasting nut that maintains its just picked taste, never over done. With our packaging process also under the same roof, we can ensure “Just In Time” (JIT) freshness that you can taste!
Feel free to insert your own sarcastic comment here.
I am sure we’ll be hearing a lot more about this very soon.
