
In a little over a week, food companies have recalled a number of products suspected of being contaminated. Besides peanut butter, there has been "fresh cantaloupe, baby food, chicken strips and now mushrooms" added to the list of products.
With the peanut butter crisis fresh in the mind of food companies, they evidently ramped up their testing of products to ensure that they're providing safe food to the American public.
The results have been that a number of contaminants has been found in the foods mentioned above.
With Kraft, they found Listeria monocytogenes in their Oscar Mayer grilled chicken breast strips and recalled them immediately. The company advised that consumer return products with "Best When Used By" date of April 19 and they'll get a full refund.
On last Friday, Dole recalled cantalopes that had been found to contain a serious life-threatening salmonella.
Hain found jars of some of its Earth's Best Organic 2 Apple Peach Barley Wholesome Breakfast baby food contaminated with Colstridium botulinum, a cause of botulism, which can be life-threatening.
Another product found contaminated with trace amounts of E. coli bacteria was mushrooms from private-label brand "Wellsley Farms," which is from BJ's Wholesale Club.
In all the cases above there have been no reported cases of sickness.
But it does show that there has been a somewhat lax attitude by some companies in managing the food supply in the country. There is no way that this is a coincidental set of circumstances. After the outbreak related to peanut butter, all the companies ramped up their procedures to make sure they caught anything that may go out contaminated.
Sean McBride, vp/communications for the Grocery Manufacturers/Food Producers Association said, "The food industry across the board, from field to fork, has food safety as its number one priority. Without safe food, nothing else we do is possible." He added that the food industry and government is working hard to ensure the safety of the food supply in the U.S.
The CDC said that there is approximately 76 million cases of food-borne illness each year in the U.S., most of those are mild they said and only result in symptoms for a couple of days. As usual, it's the young, elderly and those with low immune systems that suffer the most.
It is good to see leaders in the food industry take a more proactive approach to this problem. The fact that this many new food sources were discovered shows that it's a problem that can't be treated nonchalantly in any way. There needs to be a continuous, aggressive management of our food supply; for the safety of the population, along with the success of a company ... the two go hand-in-hand.
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» List of Contaminated Food Products Grows from BizzBites.com
In a little over a week, food companies have recalled a number of products suspected of being contaminated. Besides peanut butter, there has been "fresh cantaloupe, baby food, chicken strips and now mushrooms" added to the list of products. [Read More]
Tracked on: February 22, 2007 3:18 PM | Permalink to Trackback