Tainted Peanuts in America: Three of Nine Deaths are My State

Salmonella got into America's food supply: Just the peanuts, and less than 1% of those delicious subterranean legumes were affected.

So far, nine people have died after eating tainted peanut products. Three of them lived in Minnesota.

This Time, it's Personal: A Third of the Dead are Minnesotans

I'm taking this peanut affair a bit more personally than some other topics. Three of the nine deaths were here in Minnesota, all of them in Brainerd care facilities:

• Shirley Mae Almer, 72, formerly of Perham
• Clifford Tousignant, 78, originally of Duluth
• Doris Flatgard, 87, apparently of Brainerd
  (myFOX9.com, Brainerd Dispatch)

Brainerd, Minnesota, is roughly fifty miles northeast of my home: practically next door, by the North Dakota standards I grew up with. Peanut Corporation of America's cost-cutting gambit came even closer to home. The school that's about a block east of where I'm sitting got 14 units of possibly-tainted peanuts last month.

I'm not happy about this.

In the news:

• "Lax Regulation In Peanut Factories"
  CBS News (February 11, 2009)
• "Local peanut plant may be linked to salmonella 02-11-09"
  Plainview Daily Herald (February 11, 2009)
• "Peanut factory owner takes Fifth in salmonella case"
  Los Angeles Times (February 11, 2009)
• "U.S. peanut firm owner refuses to testify on salmonella"
  Reuters (February 11, 2009)
• "Sen. Klobuchar issues statement on recalled peanuts "
  HomeTownSource.com (February 11, 2009)
• "E-mails show company knew of salmonella, shipped anyway"
  Atlanta Journal Constitution (February 11, 2009)
• "Peanut Corp. Gets Congressional Subpeona; Closes Texas Plant"
  Health Blog, Wall Street Journal (February 11, 2009)
• "Cracking the case of the poison processed peanuts"
  Atlanta Journal Constitution (February 9, 2009)
• "How Could it Happen? Salmonella Timeline"
  Channel 9 News, Chattanooga, Tennessee (February 10, 2009)
• "Lawsuit Expected in Third Minnesota
  Salmonella-Related Death"
  myFOX9.com (January 28, 2009)
  (Shirley Mae Almer, from Perham, Minnesota, was in Brainerd when she died )
• "All three state salmonella victims lived in Brainerd"
  Brainerd Dipatch (January 28, 2009)
  (Note: This paper requires visitors to fill out a lengthy and somewhat intrusive form before reading their articles. Not, in my opinion, a good idea ("Website Design: Just Because Everybody Else is Doing it - - - " Apathetic Lemming of the North (February 4, 2009))
• "Peanut plant knew of bacteria problem"
  Atlanta Journal Constitution (January 28, 2009)
• "3rd death in Minnesota is linked to salmonella"
  Minneapolis Star Tribune (January 23, 2009)
• "King Nut Issues Peanut Butter Recall"
  U.S. Food and Drug Administration press release (January 10, 2009)

My opinions about tainted peanuts, a clueless businessman, and threats to a food supply are in "Peanut Terrorism? Peanut Corp. of America Reveals Dangerous Security Gap " (Another War-on-Terror Blog (February 11, 2009)).

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UPDATE (February 12, 2009)

"Peanut Product Recalls: Salmonella Typhimurium"
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (updated February 12, 2009)

There's limited good news here:

"...Major national brands of jarred peanut butter found in grocery stores are not affected by the PCA recall...."

The page has links to "Peanut Containing Products Recall List" and "Using and sharing the Peanut-Containing Product Recall Widget" - The recall list is extensive, but if your browser has a 'search' function, you can use it to see if brands you use have been recalled.