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Earlier Peanut Butter Contamination Kept Quiet

Retiree Says Infested Peanut Butter Was Quietly Buried

March 5, 2007

• FDA Failed to Follow Up on 2004 Peanut Butter Contamination • Peter Pan Returning To Store Shelves • Consumers Still Getting Sick From Tainted Peanut Butter • Fourth Peanut Butter Death Reported • Peanut Butter Recall Extended to Products Made as Early as 2004 • Peanut Butter Scare Stirs Congress • Consumers Left Holding the Peanut Butter Jar • Earlier Peanut Butter Contamination Kept Quiet • Peanut Butter Developed as a Health Food • Third Death Blamed on Peanut Butter • Peanut Butter Recalls Spread to Ice Cream & Desserts • FDA Says Peanut Butter Salmonella Outbreak Is "Ongoing" • Salmonella Confirmed in Peanut Butter • Second Death Linked To Tainted Peanut Butter • Death Linked To Tainted Peanut Butter • ConAgra Recalls Tainted Peanut Butter as Complaints Mount • FDA Widens Peanut Butter Warning • Reports of Peanut Butter-Borne Illness Increase • FDA Warns of Salmonella in Peanut Butter --- • Consumer Complaints about Peanut Butter --- • Salmonella: What It Is • More about Food Safety ...

While the Peter Pan/Great Value peanut butter episode took most consumers -- and, seemingly, most food safety regulators -- by surprise, it was nothing new to Sanford Bass, a Topeka, Kansas, retiree.

As Bass remembers it, the first Peter Pan peanut butter salmonella outbreak occurred back in 1971 or 1972. He was then working for Derby Foods, a division of Swift & Co., in Chicago.

"We recalled (the peanut butter) to our broker warehouses, loaded it into 13 box cars, and buried it in a phosphate mine owned by Swift in Agricola, Fla., located on the then-Seaboard Coastline Railroad," he told ConsumerAffairs.com.

"The culprit in this situation was three strains of Salmonella resulting from poultry products produced at the same plant," Bass recalled. "We were down for several months until we could effectively clean the piping system to prevent further contamination."

Bass said his job was to work with the food brokers to arrange for the transportation of the contaminated peanut butter and get it to the phosphate mine in Agricola for burial.

Was the government notified and the Salmonella-infested peanut butter recalled? Bass doesn't know.

"I had no knowledge of reporting procedures of these problems to government agencies, nor was it my responsibility. This was the function of management," he said.

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