Investigators target second peanut plant

Federal health officials are investigating another Peanut Corp. of America processing plant as a possible second source in the national salmonella outbreak, officials said Monday.

Peanut Corp.’s plant in Plainview, Texas, was identified as a potential source of salmonella after Colorado health officials found six cases that have the same genetic fingerprint as the salmonella cases linked to the Blakely plant.

The development of a potential second source of salmonella complicates a food-safety investigation that had focused on a single factory, the Peanut Corp.’s plant in Blakely.

But the six Colorado illnesses were linked to the Texas plant, according to Dr. Ned Calonge, chief medical officer of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. That suggests a common source of contamination, he said.

“The FDA is looking at both the Blakely, Ga., plant and the Plainview, Texas, plant as possible sources of the contamination,” FDA spokeswoman Stephanie Kwisnek said in an e-mail Monday.

The Colorado cases were associated with a natural-foods grocery store, Vitamin Cottage, that bought peanuts from the Peanut Corp.’s Texas plant and ground them into its own peanut butter. The natural foods chain recalled its Vitamin Cottage Fresh-Ground Peanut Butter.

Vitamin Cottage officials said in a statement that their company “is not the source of the contamination, and in fact, its stringent cleaning processes may have helped to contain any bacterium from spreading further.”

The production of food at two different plants that sickened people with salmonella bacteria that have the same genetic fingerprint means the processing plants share something in common, said food safety expert Michael Osterholm.

“They have to have the same source,” said Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “You could have peanuts moving from one source in Georgia that ended up in Texas. … There’s a tie there.”

It could be a common peanut farm, or a common peanut processor or some other shared source between the two plants, he said.

More than 650 people in 44 states have been sickened and as many as nine people may have died from salmonella, according to the FDA.

Texas health officials closed the Plainview plant earlier this month and ordered the company to recall all peanut products produced there since its opening in March 2005. Peanut Corp. filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation on Feb. 13.

The additional recalls deepen what is already one of the largest food recalls in American history. The recall began in January with a few hundred products and as of Sunday stood at 2,591 products from more than 200 companies.

The recalls have extended beyond American borders to Aruba, Australia, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Canada, the Cayman Islands, Haiti, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, St. Maarten, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the United Kingdom. The recalls also have reached into some surprising products, such as bird food.

The Texas plant had operated for several years with no license and no government health inspections. Recent preliminary tests at the Texas plant showed possible signs of salmonella contamination, health officials said.

Staff writer Alison Young and The Associated Press contributed to this article.

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