Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

ConAgra Foods has a huge problem on their hands, as they largely failed their customers by not catching bad peanut butter before it came off the line.

Government officials say that this is the first case of salmonella outbreak in the U.S. that is linked to peanut butter. Australia had one in the mid-1990s which was blamed on poor sanitation conditions at the plant.

As of now there are close to 300 people in 39 states that have become ill from the peanut butter.

An AP report says that "Salmonella commonly originates in the feces of birds and animals, and could be introduced at a multitude 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. When making peanut butter, the nuts 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 experts say that there are points in the process where salmonella could be introduced and survive, and that would be when the product is cooling down, put into jars and finally sealed.

Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer of the Food and Drug Administration said "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 reason I say this is a management nightmare is what Acheson thinks on next, "Acheson speculated a small, on-again, off-again source of contamination caused the outbreak, which would explain the relatively small number of illness."

In other words, this went on for a period of time and whatever safeguards that were in place were either ignored, forgotten or simply let go. That's a huge management failure. It would be more understandable if it had happened at once, but to happen over a period of time is simply negligence.

Why am I so strong on this? Because it hit my household hard, to the point of being very dangerous. And even if it hadn't, this is inexcusable to have happen over a period of time.

The response by ConAgra spokesman Chris Kircher tells me why there's a problem: "We're trying to understand what else we need to do or should be doing." The fact that they don't know why this happened and what to do about it reveals the very reason the problem happened in the first place.

With there being no problem ever before in this area, there was definitely some place in the process that had changed. The failure to see this is why this is haunting ConAgra now, and some its customers are now suffering for that failure.

We're dealing with food here. The protective measures that are in place aren't something that can be loosely adhered to. Something obviously happened that was let go day-after-day while the product was sent out for public consumption. Somewhere in the management, there was a huge failure that could have cost people their lives. A company must do better than that.

Peter Pan and certain batches of Wal-Mart (WMT) house brand Great Value are the known sources at this time. If the number on the lid is '2111' it should be thrown away, that is what determines the source of the plant the peanut butter was made at.

To get a refund, consumers should send lids and their names and addresses to ConAgra Foods, P.O. Box 57078, Irvine, CA 92619-7078. For more information, call (866) 344-6970.