Let's face it — nothing would ruin a spoonful of peanut butter than a hefty dose of salmonella. And the worst part? That exact scenario is more common than you might think.
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00:00Let's face it, nothing would ruin a spoonful of peanut butter than a hefty dose of salmonella.
00:05And the worst part? That exact scenario is more common than you might think.
00:09Peanut Corporation of America first opened in 1977 as a rural, family-owned peanut roasting
00:15plant. Founders Hugh Parnell and his son Stuart built PCA into a multimillion-dollar company,
00:20selling their peanut products to huge brands such as Little Debbie, Kellogg, and Sara Lee.
00:24Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee.
00:27In 1990, however, trouble struck. At PCA's plant in Texas, federally appointed testers detected
00:33unlawfully high levels of poisonous aflatoxins in the company's peanut butter products.
00:37Ingesting aflatoxins, especially long-term, is life-threatening to animals and can cause
00:42cancer or liver disease in humans. A month later, PCA sent a recall notice to its clients,
00:47but it was not a seamless transaction. American Candy Company had already purchased hundreds of
00:5250-pound cases of PCA peanut butter and turned them into roughly 8,000 cases of peanut butter
00:57kisses intended for sale at Walmart. The recall prevented the confectioner from selling any
01:01sweets made with PCA's toxic lot. American Candy Company subsequently sued PCA,
01:06who settled to the tune of $90,000 in 1993.
01:10Hey honey, there's a little something I've been meaning to tell you."
01:13Kraft Australia found itself in unknown territory in June 1996,
01:17when the Victorian Department of Human Services targeted the company's peanut
01:20butter in a food poisoning investigation. The death of a 72-year-old man about a month earlier
01:25had been linked to Kraft's tainted peanut butter after the autopsy showed salmonella pathogens
01:30in his lungs. Kraft recalled eight varieties of its peanut butter on June 23, two more on the 26th,
01:36and on June 30, took all of its peanut butter off the market. Kraft had no blueprint to navigate
01:40the situation. There had never been a peanut butter recall attributed to salmonella contamination
01:45before, and the public was left confused and scared. Worse still, Kraft was accused of being
01:50slow to address consumer risk when the problem was brought to light.
01:53Around 500 salmonella cases had been connected to the peanut butter recall. As a result,
01:57Kraft's financial deficit was estimated to be around $15 million,
02:01while a class-action lawsuit involving 540 complainants was levied against the company.
02:06After months of investigating, researchers surmised that the likely source of salmonella
02:10arose from a bad judgment call by Kraft's peanut supplier, the Peanut Company of Australia.
02:15The company had moved large batches of peanuts with an auger that had been stored in a mouse-infested
02:20tool yard. The auger, which was almost certainly contaminated by mice feces,
02:24was not properly sanitized before coming into contact with the peanuts.
02:28In May 2003, Winn-Dixie recalled its private label Deep South Peanut Butter due to
02:32impermissible levels of aflatoxin. In total, 223,081 pounds of Deep South Peanut Butter
02:38were deemed unsafe for consumption. That said, Deep South Peanut Butter's days at Winn-Dixie
02:42were numbered anyway. The chain retired the use of its Deep South private label in 2003,
02:47despite it being the first of Winn-Dixie's numerous store brand names, having debuted in
02:511956. Still, this wasn't to be Winn-Dixie's final aflatoxin scare. In October 2020, the company
02:57recalled Whiskers & Tails Dog Food after it was found to have been contaminated with high levels
03:02of the toxin. In 2006, CDC investigators linked a number of salmonella infections to two peanut
03:08butter brands, Peter Pan and Walmart's Great Value label.
03:11"...wait till she tastes this."
03:14Notably, both brands had used a ConAgra facility in Sylvester, Georgia. The FDA warned the public
03:20not to consume Peter Pan or Great Value peanut butter with product code beginning in 2111 due
03:24to potential contamination. On February 14, 2007, ConAgra ceased production at the Georgia plant
03:30and voluntarily recalled all peanut butter produced there since January 2004, a quantity
03:35totaling 326 million pounds. Unsurprisingly, conditions at the facility were not up to FDA
03:41standards. A leaky roof, malfunctioning sprinkler system, storm-damaged silo,
03:46and a faulty peanut roaster all contributed to the plant's issues.
03:49Twice in 2004, routine testing had come back positive for salmonella and ConAgra peanut butter,
03:54but the company claimed its employees simply hadn't read the tests correctly.
03:58These oversights caused 714 reported illnesses in 47 states, and likely thousands more. In 2016,
04:05ConAgra pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of shipping contaminated peanut
04:08butter across state lines and paid an $11 million settlement.
04:12In November 2008, the CDC began investigating a 12-state cluster of salmonella cases that
04:17seemed to be rapidly increasing in size. In January 2009, the outbreak was traced to five-pound
04:23containers of King Nut peanut butter used by cafeterias and food manufacturers. King Nut was
04:28made in a facility in Georgia owned by Peanut Corporation of America. King Nut peanut butter
04:32wasn't sold directly to consumers, but people ate it under a host of different brand names.
04:37Later that month, PCA recalled all products manufactured in the Georgia plant since January
04:411, 2007. Then, in February 2009, the company shut down. The salmonella outbreak that the company
04:48had caused sickened 714 people in 46 states, and one in Canada. Nine people died.
04:53A subsequent FDA investigation uncovered 12 instances between 2007 and 2009 in which PCA
05:00shipped products before receiving test results that were positive for salmonella. And emails
05:04sent by PCA's owner, Stuart Parnell, revealed a long history of cutting corners and defrauding
05:09customers.
05:10Their idea of a lab and quality control on that was making sure the peanuts were the right color.
05:17PCA was ordered to pay victims of the outbreak $12 million. And in 2015,
05:22Parnell was sentenced to 28 years in prison, the largest criminal sentence ever given in a
05:27food safety case.
05:28We have a consumer alert for you tonight. Batches of Skippy Peanut
05:32Butter are being recalled in 16 states.
05:36In March 2011, results from routine internal testing at the Skippy factory in Arkansas
05:40led to a dangerous discovery. There was salmonella in the peanut butter. The bacteria was found in
05:45Skippy Reduced Fat Creamy Peanut Butter Spread and Skippy Reduced Fat Superchunk Peanut Butter
05:50Spread. The 16.3-ounce jars of tainted peanut butter had already been shipped to 16 states,
05:55prompting Unilever United States Incorporated, Skippy's parent company at the time,
05:59to initiate a voluntary recall. Although just two types of Skippy peanut butter
06:03were implicated in the recall, nearly 65,000 units had to be pulled in the name of public
06:07safety. No illnesses were reported in the wake of the Skippy recall, and the brand still managed
06:12to pull off $300 million in sales that year. The scare may have left Unilever with a bad
06:16taste in its mouth, however, as less than two years later, they sold Skippy to Hormel Foods
06:21Corporation for $700 million.
06:23The J.M. Smucker Company has been making spreads since the 1890s, but their long history of feeding
06:29America has had some real low points, such as the 2011 recall for Smucker's Natural Chunky Peanut
06:34Butter. Routine testing revealed that this specific variety of Smucker's peanut butter
06:38contained salmonella bacterium, and the troubling data left J.M. Smucker no choice but to issue a
06:43recall for all 16-ounce jars of its Natural Chunky Peanut Butter sold between November 8 and 17,
06:482011. The potentially contaminated product had been shipped to 24 states,
06:52but on the upside, no illnesses were reported in relation to the recall.
06:56Still, the contamination resulted in over 1,600 cases of Smucker's Natural Chunky Peanut Butter
07:01being deemed as unsafe for consumption. With 12 jars per case, that meant Smucker's had to
07:06recall nearly 20,000 jars of product. New Mexico-based manufacturer Sunland Incorporated
07:11issued a recall for its almond butter and peanut butter products in September 2012.
07:15An outbreak of salmonella that ripped through 18 states was linked to Sunland,
07:19and in early October, the company expanded the recall to include all of its peanut products.
07:24It was a decision that would earmark the beginning of the end for the once-prosperous company.
07:28"...$2.6 million worth of peanut butter is being dumped at a New Mexico landfill."
07:33In November 2012, the situation became even more grave. As the continuing recall expansion on
07:38Sunland's products reached 240 products, the FDA suspended Sunland from distributing more
07:43peanut products under the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011. It was the first
07:48manufacturer to be hit with this newly acquired reach of the law. At that point, 42 illnesses had
07:53been reported among 20 states, with over half of the individuals being children under the age of 10.
07:58The scandal was too much for Sunland Incorporated to handle, and so, in October 2013,
08:03the company filed for bankruptcy and shut up shop for good.
08:07Initially, Inspired Organics' 2018 product recall was exclusive to the company's sunflower butter.
08:12This recall was issued after testing performed by the Michigan Department of Agriculture and
08:16Rural Development came back positive for listeria. Days later, Inspired Organics tested its almond
08:22butter and detected the presence of listeria in that, too. The recall was subsequently expanded.
08:27Three days later, Inspired Organics also pulled its peanut butter and tahini butter off the
08:31shelves. These products, manufactured by Oskree Corporation in Wisconsin, were sold in a total
08:36of 15 states and in Ontario, Canada. Inspired Organics' nut butter recall opened the floodgates
08:41on Oskree's Lake Mills production facility. By January 2019, over 40 other nut and seed
08:46products produced at the plant had been recalled due to the listeria risk. Come March 2019,
08:51Oskree's Lake Mills plant appeared to be shut for good.
08:55Skippy peanut butter suffered another large-scale recall in 2022. This Class II recall was
09:00voluntarily initiated by the company on March 30, 2022, due to the risk of some peanut butter
09:05jars containing small fragments of stainless steel. This unintended ingredient came from a
09:10small piece of manufacturing equipment that had fallen into the peanut butter during a mechanical
09:14repair. Right off the bat, Skippy stressed that the incident constituted a very limited recall,
09:18but this was only partially true. The recall was limited in the sense that it affected
09:23offshoot varieties of the brand's regular peanut butter. Skippy reduced-fat peanut butter and
09:27Skippy creamy peanut butter blended with plant protein. That said, these peanut butter jars
09:31were recalled in massive quantities, over 9,000 cases of product distributed throughout 19 states.
09:37No reported injuries stemmed from this recall, though, and Skippy emphasized that
09:41quality control was central to its peanut butter production process.
09:45In May 2022, a J.M. Smucker facility in Kentucky that produced Jif peanut butter was to blame for
09:50a salmonella outbreak that affected 17 states. The FDA used whole genome sequencing to match an
09:55environmental sample previously taken from J.M. Smucker's Lexington facility with the type of
10:00salmonella responsible for the multi-state outbreak. Jif wasted no time in voluntarily
10:05recalling its peanut butter. The company stated that a faulty piece of equipment may have allowed
10:09water to enter the production environment, creating a breeding ground for bacteria.
10:12And although Jif vowed to destroy all affected units,
10:15this contamination scandal was only just getting started.
10:18"...several more companies are recalling grocery items because of the Jif peanut butter recall."
10:24One day after Jif's May 20th recall announcement,
10:26Wawa recalled its apple and peanut butter dipper snack as it contained Jif peanut butter. This
10:30set off a domino effect, causing a total of 20 brands to recall sweets and store-prepared foods
10:35that Jif peanut butter had compromised. Jif's recall accounted for 21 reported illnesses and
10:40four hospitalizations, and the ordeal cost J.M. Smucker an estimated $125 million.
10:472024's most substantial peanut butter recall occurred in South Africa,
10:51with all of the products involved having had ties to a company named House of Natural Butters.
10:55In early February, supermarket chain Pick and Pay recalled its no-name brand of smooth peanut
10:59butter, as well as smooth-and-crunchy peanut butter varieties from Eat & All-Natural.
11:03Grocers Faithful to Nature and Take-A-Lot also removed Eat & All-Natural peanut butters from
11:08its shelves. Standard testing of Eat & All-Natural's product unveiled dangerously high
11:12levels of aflatoxins. About a week after Pick and Pay's national recall, other South African
11:17grocery chains followed suit. Diskem recalled smooth-and-crunchy peanut butters sold under
11:21the Diskem's Lifestyle brand, while Klix & Wazoogle Superfoods also stripped peanut
11:25butters from circulation. As an investigation by the National Consumer Commission unfolded,
11:30more brands were affected. Eat Naked peanut butter and Woolworth's peanut butter ice cream
11:34were recalled, while Clover pulled over 10,000 units of GoNuts peanut butter.
11:38As alarming and widespread as the recall may have been, however, no related illnesses were reported.