The peanut-butter mystery

By MIKE STOBBE

The ASSOCIATED PRESS

ATLANTA -- Government scientists struggled Thursday to pinpoint the source of the first U.S. salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter, the kid favorite packed into millions of lunchboxes every day.

Nearly 300 people in 39 states, including 13 in Texas, have fallen ill since August, and federal health investigators said they strongly suspect Peter Pan peanut butter and certain batches of Wal-Mart's Great Value brand -- both made by ConAgra Foods at its only peanut-butter plant, in Sylvester, Ga.

Consumers should throw out jars with a product code on the lid beginning with 2111, which denotes the plant where it was made.

How the dangerous germ got into the peanut butter is still a mystery. But because peanuts are usually heated to germ-killing temperatures during manufacturing, government and industry officials said the contamination may have been caused by dirty jars or equipment.

"We think we have very strong evidence that this was the brand of peanut butter. Now it goes to the next step of going to the place where the peanut butter was made and focusing in on the testing," said Dr. Mike Lynch, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

How many jars are affected by the recall is not clear, ConAgra officials said. The Sylvester plant is the sole producer of the nationally distributed Peter Pan brand, and the recall covers all types of peanut butter produced at the plant from May 2006 until now. Some Great Value peanut butter is made at other plants and is not affected by the recall.

"We're talking a lot of jars of peanut butter," said Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

At local stores

At the Wal-Mart Supercenter at Airport Freeway and Beach Street, manager Danny Lovelace said employees filled five shopping carts with Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter Thursday.

The store's entire stock of Great Value peanut butter was taken off the shelves, Lovelace said.

Albertsons stores removed the suspect peanut butter first thing in the morning, spokeswoman Jennifer Vroman said. At Kroger stores, workers removed all Peter Pan peanut butter, spokesman Gary Huddleston said.

Mary Hallmark, 41, of Fort Worth, snagged a large container of Jif peanut butter Thursday night at Wal-Mart.

"Jif doesn't have a problem," she said. "And choosy moms choose Jif."

Looking for the source

The strain in this outbreak, Salmonella serotype Tennessee, is comparatively rare, as is salmonella contamination of peanut products, said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Most cases of salmonella poisoning are caused by undercooked eggs and chicken.

The only known salmonella outbreak in peanut butter -- in Australia during the mid-1990s -- was blamed on unsanitary plant conditions.

FDA inspectors visited the now-closed Sylvester plant Wednesday and Thursday. The FDA last inspected the plant in 2005. Testing was also being done on at least some of the salmonella victims' peanut-butter jars.

ConAgra spokesman Chris Kircher said the company randomly tests 60 to 80 jars of peanut butter that come off its Sylvester plant's line each day for salmonella and other germs.

"We've had no positive hits on that going back for years," he said.

He said the plant was shut down as a precaution.

Salmonella commonly originates in the feces of birds and other animals and could be introduced at a number of stages in the peanut-butter-making process. But many safeguards are in place.

While rodents and birds commonly get into peanut storage bins, germs are killed when raw peanuts are roasted. As the peanut butter is made, the peanuts are again heated -- above the salmonella-killing temperature of 165 degrees -- as they are ground into a paste and mixed with other ingredients before being squirted into jars and quickly sealed.

"The heating process is sufficient to kill salmonella, should it be present," said Mike Doyle, director of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety.

Experts say the point at which salmonella could be introduced and survive would be as the product cools down, is placed in jars and sealed. At most plants, those steps take just minutes.

But "there is quite a lot that happens after that heat step ... before it's put in jars. So there's definitely an opportunity for contamination after the roasting," the FDA's Acheson said.

Acheson speculated that a small, on-again, off-again source of contamination caused the outbreak, which would explain the relatively small number of illnesses.

That "will make finding it in peanut butter difficult. But that's not going to stop us from looking," he said.

The outbreak

The highest number of cases reported in one state is 32 in New York.

About 20 percent of the ill were hospitalized, and no one has died, the CDC said.

About a quarter of the people said they ate peanut butter at least once a day, the CDC's Lynch said. It was the only food that most of the patients had all recently eaten.

The outbreak was detected by the CDC and state health agencies when they noticed spikes in the cases of people sickened by an unusual type of salmonella, starting in August. Once peanut butter emerged as a link, the CDC notified the FDA.

Staff writers Dan X. McGraw and Maria M. Perotin contributed to this report.

A closer look

In our schools

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are already not served in many school districts because of students' food allergies. Crowley, for example, uses sunflower butter and jelly. But the Fort Worth school district will keep serving sandwiches made from the USDA-approved commodity peanut butter, not jars of Peter Pan or Great Value, said food services director Phyllis Propes. "I can assure you, we don't have those," she said.

Salmonella symptoms

Salmonella infection sickens about 40,000 people in the U.S. each year, according to the CDC. Salmonellosis, as the infection is known, kills about 600 people annually. Symptoms can include diarrhea, fever, dehydration, abdominal pain and vomiting.

All about peanut butter

Birthplace: St. Louis. According to PeanutButterLovers.com, in 1890, "an unknown St. Louis physician supposedly encouraged the owner of a food products company, George A. Bayle Jr., to process and package ground peanut paste as a nutritious protein substitute for people with poor teeth who couldn't chew meat."

In a year: The average American eats 3 pounds of peanut butter. An estimated 974 million pounds of peanut butter is sold each year in the U.S., and PB&J is the most popular sandwich among children.

Not for me: Peanut allergies affect about 1.5 million people in the U.S., according to the Mayo Clinic.

Health food: Peanut-butter consumption is consistent with many popular diets and may reduce the risk of type II diabetes. Take a look at compiled research at the Peanut Institute Web site ( http://www.peanut-institute.org/).

What Elvis ate: Yep, the obligatory mention of one of the King's favorites: the grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich.

Not a nut: Peanuts are legumes.

National Peanut Month: March.

SOURCES: Star-Telegram research, The Associated Press