Bloggers Asked to Help in Peanut Salmonella Outbreak
With an overwhelming number of peanut product recalls associated with the current Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak, federal government agencies have reached out to bloggers and other non-traditional media to spread the word.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention held a special teleconference today with help from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration to share resources with social networking practitioners. An example is this web-ready graphic designed for blogs and other websites:
More than 100 companies in the U.S. and Canada have issued recalls for more than 887 products and the recalls are still pouring in. The scope of the problem has to do with the ingredient-driven nature of the Salmonella outbreak, which has sickened more than 550 people in 43 states since Sept. 1. The outbreak peaked in December but is still going.
Eight deaths have been associated with the outbreak, including three in Minnesota. Pritzker | Olsen, P.A.,, a national food safety law firm based in Minneapolis, was the first to file a wrongful death lawsuit. The firm did so on behalf of the heirs of Shirley Mae Almer, 72, of Perham, Minn. She died Dec. 21 with a Salmonella infection that matched the outbreak strain. Pritzker | Olsen also represents the family of a second Minnesota victim, Doris Flatgard, 87, who died in Brainerd on Jan. 4.
According to federal authorities, the cause of the outbreak is contaminated peanut butter, peanut paste, roasted peanuts and other peanut products produced at the Blakely, Georgia, plant of Peanut Corporation of America. The company has recalled all products made at the Georgia plant since January 1, 2007. The commodities are used by other food companies as ingredients -- hence the massive number of product recalls.
