Last Pistachio Roundup
(Factory Food • )
Now the Food and Drug Administration and Setton International Foods acknowledge that the Commack, N.Y.‘s California pistachio plant is recalling the company’s entire 2008 crop. Well, Setton acknowledges this fact on the FDA site, but to this day has not acknowledged on its own web site that anything is amiss.
Gardiner Harris and Andrew Martin of the New York Times have many interesting details, most especially on decisions at the agency top that led to handling this latest food emergency differently than the peanut debacle:
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.
The FDA now says its joint inspection of Setton’s 150,000-square-foot pistachio processing plant in Terra Bella, Calif., “indicates the presence of Salmonella in critical areas of the facility and the potential for cross-contamination between raw and roasted products.”
The Times quoted an FDA official as saying Setton’s own tests had uncovered salmonella in its roasted pistachios 18 times since September. The FDA concluded Setton was unable to guarantee the safety of its own products. The FDA, it turns out, can’t force anyone to recall their products. They can only urge.
Urging ain’t enough, and that needs to change, don’t you think?
Of course, as noted below, the FDA’s blanket pistachio warning has already begun devastating the industry by painting the rest of the nation’s producers with the same brush that portrays Setton International Foods as appearing purposefully negligent.
Today the FDA took steps to lessen the damage already done, modifying their earlier warning against eating any pistachios. Now, the agency says, “Consumers should not eat pistachios or food products containing them (such as pistachio bakery goods and pistachio ice cream) until they can determine that the products do not contain pistachios recalled by Setton.”
Therefore, I can finish my bag of Paramount Farms’ Wonderful Pistachios. And, while the FDA says it bears no responsibility for the information, it is providing a link to a pistachio industry web site serving as kind of an anti-recall resource: It lists pistachio brands and products that are not subject to recall.
From here, I expect a long string of products to be recalled. What’s less predictable is Setton’s fate. Luckily for the company, no group of hundreds of victims of illness has emerged to potentially serve as plaintiffs. Unluckily, one of the biggest pistachio production plants in the country has been identified as also producing salmonella on a regular basis.
→ B.Dunn, Apr 07, 2009, 05 25 am
