More Nuts to You, American Consumer

By FRED PRITZKER

There’s another potential Salmonella outbreak associated with tons of nuts used in a wide variety of consumer products. Sound familiar?

Near the end of a prior Salmonella outbreak (involving peanuts processed by Peanut Corporation of America that sickened hundreds and killed nine), a California-based company, Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella Inc., is recalling 1,000 tons of roasted pistachio nuts.

According to published reports, the voluntary recall was initiated after an inspection by one of the company’s large purchasers found evidence of several types of Salmonella in roasted pistachios during product testing at the pistachio plant.

The findings were reported to the Food and Drug Administration not by the nut producer, but rather by the customer that did the testing. According to the New York Times, the product purchaser “said its inspectors visited the California plant where the pistachios were processed, and found that the plant was not keeping its roasted pistachios separate from the incoming flow of raw nuts. Like other nuts, raw pistachios can carry pathogens that are killed in the roasting process.”

This raises a number of questions and points, yet again, that relate to the need for an immediate overhaul of the food safety systems in this country.

First, why did it take an outside inspection and testing to find evidence of several types of Salmonella? Why didn’t the company’s own testing identify the problem?

The recall involves tons of product produced over an extended period of time. This indicates a long standing and systemic failure that should have been readily identified long before this recall. The third-party audit that detected the Salmonella outbreak identified a classic sanitation violation: failure to properly separate raw, disease-laden product from finished product.

No inspector or sanitarian should miss a process violation of this magnitude.

Where are the inspectors? Where is the testing? Where are the sanitation plans (HACCP, SSOPs, GMPs) that the public has a right to expect? How many more people have to die or get violently ill before we remove these “nuts” from the marketplace?