Cracking The Case Of The Poison Processed Peanuts

February 9th, 2009|David Hughes
State

Its a different story now.

Solving the case of the poison processed peanuts took marathon work by federal scientists, clues in Canada, Oregon, Ohio and Connecticut, and a breakthrough in Minnesota at the hands of public health hotshots known as Team Diarrhea.

So labyrinthian has the nations food production and distribution network become that a salmonella outbreak that has sickened 575 people in 43 states and resulted in the recall of more than 1,500 foods is traced to one plant making a mere 1 percent of the countys peanut products.

Its a far cry from 1906, year of the Pure Food and Drug Act, when Americans got most of their food from local farmers, grew some of their own and turned to processed products mainly for simple staples.

Those werent necessarily the good old days. Shady operators packed sawdust and talcum into grains and sugar to add bulk. Toxic chemicals were used as preservatives. Much was foul and filthy before modern refrigeration and sanitation.

But when maggots munched in a sack of barley, it wasnt much of a mystery who let that happen.

In contrast, the peanut potboiler has posed a series of mysteries: a whatdunit, a whodunit, and the still-urgent question, where did it all go? Now the government has added another layer of intrigue to one of the largest recalls in history. Its accused the peanut plant of shipping products the company knew had tested positive for salmonella.

THE WHATDUNIT

A chain of events has to play out for the feds to discover an outbreak of foodborne illness. Sick people have to go to the doctor. The doctor must order tests. The lab must perform the tests correctly, then report the results to state or local authorities who must tell the federal government.

Then the real detective work begins.

The peanut case quickened the pulse of federal scientists on Nov. 12, more than a month after people started getting sick, when the federal Centers for Disease Control detected a cluster of salmonella cultures with an unusual genetic fingerprint reported from 12 states.

PulseNet, a national network for finding patterns in widely dispersed foodborne bacterial illness, offered additional clues when four more states reported the cluster.

Then on Dec. 2, scientists began examining a second salmonella cluster with a similar genetic makeup, reported from 17 states. The two clusters turned out to be the same.

“December is when the alarm bells go off,” Kahn said.

To solve a whatdunit, public health officials need to know what type of salmonella has caused an outbreak and what food is carrying it. There are more than 2,500 kinds of salmonella, each divided into subtypes.

For a while, chicken was suspected, as well as peanut butter.

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