The Buck Stops Where
(Factory Food • )
Beginning yesterday, news reports quoted Kraft Foods as acknowledging that either it or its wholesalers discovered salmonella in Setton International Foods’ pistachios as early as September.
Up until yesterday, Kraft was being held up as a semi-hero and evidence that the system of relying on private food companies’ inspections is good enough to ensure the safety of the American consumer.
Instead, in yet another verse of the same song we’ve been puking to for the last few years, it turns out another contaminated factory food product has been out there in public for months.
Also yesterday, Setton’s California processing plant broadened it’s recall. I’ve been reporting the FDA-quoted figure of 1 million pounds of pistachios as already having been recalled, while several other news organizations, perhaps privy to information I haven’t seen, have been calling it 2 million pounds. Today, the Chicago Tribune reports that Setton is recalling its entire 2008 crop. Again, I haven’t seen such information.
But clearly this is a substantial recall. And while the FDA so far won’t say for super positive that any of the “several” consumer complaints of illness are directly linked to pistachios, the FDA has confirmed that four different types of salmonella have been discovered on Setton’s nuts.
I would think that would be a sufficiently serious situation to warrant a responsible company to note the recall publicly on its own web site. But Setton hasn’t, and instead only acknowledges the recall on the FDA site.
What the heck, why drive away a big new potential wholesale customer by doing anymore than the absolute minimum required by law?
Meanwhile, the FDA has publicly released a letter to the nation’s big pistachio processors that seems as much as anything designed to indicate to the public that something productive is being done about this latest mess.
“FDA intends to work closely with the pistachio industry to help it understand the risk of Salmonella and its regulatory obligations under the laws administered by the agency,” the letter’s toughest sentence says.
→ B.Dunn, Apr 04, 2009, 07 56 am
