By BETSY BLANEY
PLAINVIEW, Texas — Texas health officials ordered a recall of all peanut products from a plant operated by a company at the center of a national salmonella outbreak after inspectors found dead rodents, feces and feathers.
The Texas Department of Health and Human Services issued the order Thursday after finding a filth-infested crawl space above a production area at the Peanut Corp. of America plant. During an inspection Wednesday, officials found that an air handling system was pulling debris from the dirty crawl space into areas where dry roasted peanuts, peanut meal and granulated peanuts were processed.
The volume of products that would need to be pulled back was not immediately known. Many of the plant’s customers — mostly manufacturers — had already begun holding products back or running their own tests.
The plant, which voluntarily closed Monday, was also ordered by the state to stop producing and distributing food products
The plant in the Panhandle city of Plainview, which employs about 30 people, must close indefinitely after operating unlicensed and uninspected for nearly four years since it opened in 2005.
Health department spokesman Doug McBride said it was up to Peanut Corp. to inform its clients of the recall, but it wasn’t immediately clear if the company was complying. Phone messages seeking comment from the company weren’t returned, and no information regarding the Texas action was posted on the company’s site.
The Lynchburg, Va.-based Peanut Corp. is already under federal investigation in connection with the salmonella outbreak that has sickened 600 people and may have caused at least nine deaths nationwide. More than 2,000 possibly contaminated consumer products had already been recalled in one of the largest product recalls ever.
Federal investigators last month identified a Georgia peanut processing plant operated by Peanut Corp. as the source of the salmonella outbreak. The Plainview plant, run by Peanut Corp. subsidiary Plainview Peanut Co., had not had a state health inspection until after problems arose at the Georgia plant.
Officials at the Plainview plant had voluntarily stopped production Monday after initial lab tests showed likely salmonella contamination. Further testing was needed to confirm the results, but the health department said Thursday that its orders are not contingent on finding salmonella.
Calls to the home listed as the residence of the plant manager went unanswered late Thursday. No one answered the door.
David W. Evans, executive director of the Hale County Industrial Foundation, said the company was lured to the area with tax breaks and incentives for maintaining an employee quota. He said that quota wasn’t met.
However, the plant’s presence in Plainview was small. About 1,000 people work at a nearby Wal-Mart distribution plant, and a Cargill meatpacking plant a couple of miles away employs nearly 1,500.
Kenneth Kendrick, who worked as an assistant manager at the plant for several months in 2006, said Thursday that he had sent as many as six e-mails to the state health department while he worked there.
He said his complaints chronicled a leaking roof, which he knew could be a problem because of bird excrement.
“Anything nasty you can think of comes from water off a roof,” said Kendrick, who said he left the plant voluntarily.
Kendrick said his initial complaints about the plant spurred no action. Last month, he complained again to state officials after his grandchildren became sick after eating peanut butter crackers.
The federal government has opened a criminal investigation into the company, and its president, Stewart Parnell, repeatedly refused to answer questions Wednesday before the House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee, which is seeking ways to prevent another outbreak.
A message left seeking comment from Parnell Thursday wasn’t immediately returned.
State law allows the Department of State Health Services to issue such recall orders when it finds conditions that it says pose “an immediate and serious threat to human life or health.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which sent inspectors back to the plant after Monday’s test result, said in an e-mail that its investigation there was continuing.
Many companies hadn’t waited for state or federal officials to take action. Robert Grauer, president of In a Nut Shell, a San Leandro, Calif., said his company decided to hold back about 200 cases of peanuts from the Texas plant before the order was issued.
“We’re not going to take a chance risking our customers — not over some peanuts,” he said.
A handful of Whole Foods Market supermarkets in northern California that received products containing peanuts from the Texas plant pulled from them from shelves two days before the Texas recall “in an overabundance of caution,” said Libba Letton, spokeswoman for the Austin, Texas-based company.
———
Not a word as to the legality of the company's workers -- illegals are not necessarily the healthiest or the least hygenically challenged amongst us, although they come close...
But it is only the American food supply at risk here after all, even though it is on the endangered species list -- or should be.
Undoubtedly, the company will get a large "stimulus" check to help them through their "troubled times" -- provided they contributed to the Democrats, of course.
Let's look at the facts before going off on some mindless rant about "illegals". TX BROUGHT PLANT THERE, GAVE tax breaks etc TX DID NOT check to see if the met the tax breaks TX DID NOT check to see if they had business lisence TX DID NOT Check if they EVER had health or safety check TX DID NOT Check if they EVER even existed, as no one beyond the guy that got them tax breaks seems to know of them TX DID NOT EVDR inspect that place for anything
Yep the mindless illegal haters got it right, ALL was the illegals that may or may not have worked there, as ALL was their fault, if they had or had not worked there
Almost like what a great job GA did in health checks of the GA plant.. probably illegals there also that caused the problems, not the slovenly corrupted government of GA and TX.. Yep let's run up hte stars and bars, as the health and inspections systems in TX and GA about 1861 variety, get even with the Union, poison them! Amazing that no one seems to know nothing, but many died and sick..and the places got tax break, seems like we have a "stealth" industry in USA that is government funded.
Wonder how many more just like this running and no one inspecting or how many meeting the tax breaks they got... yep all is the fault of illegals? Some folks brilliance is amazing.
Or login with:
New Account