WASHINGTON — In one of the largest food recalls in history, the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday asked retailers, manufacturers and consumers to discard every product made in the last two years from peanuts processed by a Georgia plant at the heart of a deadly nationwide outbreak of salmonella illness.
Federal officials discovered this month that the company, Peanut Corp. of America, had shipped products contaminated with salmonella bacteria 12 times in 2007 and 2008, prompting calls in Congress for legislation and a criminal investigation by the Justice Department.
The FDA also released results of its recent inspections, which it made after it had traced the outbreak to the plant in Blakely. Federal investigators documented unsanitary conditions, including mold growing on a ceiling, rainwater leaking into the production area from skylights, gaps in the building where rodents could enter, dead roaches and inadequate ventilation.
Michael Rogers of the FDA said the company violated good manufacturing practices by selling peanut products that had tested positive for salmonella bacteria in inspections commissioned by the firm. When the products tested positive, the company commissioned another round of testing. If those tests came up clean, the products were shipped.
Rogers said the company turned over records of its inspections only after the FDA invoked special authority given to it by Congress in 2002 under laws to prevent bioterrorism. He would not say whether the company would face sanctions.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on whether the agency was evaluating the matter.
A spokesman for Peanut Corp. of America, based in Lynchburg, Va., has said the company complied with all requests by regulators from "Day 1" of their investigation.
"We have been devastated by this, and we have been working around the clock with the FDA to ensure any potentially unsafe products are removed from the market immediately," the company's president, Stewart Parnell, said in a statement Wednesday night.
The company also said that its goal "over the past 33 years has always been to follow the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's good manufacturing practices in order to provide a safe product for consumers."
