Obviously the people in charge at the Peanut Corporation of America are idiots if they thought they could get away with knowingly selling products tainted with salmonella. Sure, get 500 people sick with the bacteria, kill eight of them and no one will notice! The PCA was irresponsible and wrong to try and make a buck off of a tainted product. According to a CNN.com article, the products had tested positive for salmonella and were not retested. It is also not uncommon for the plant to ship bacteria-positive products before a second test indicating whether or not it was still positive. What a ridiculous thing to do! Not only did innocent people get sick, but the PCA was found out and is now in an enormous amount of trouble. Clearly, management isn’t too bright over there and didn’t think more than five minutes into the future.
However, if there is one thing I’ve learned from Professor Mike Martin in my meats processing class, it is that this will never happen again. The United States Department of Agriculture has been regulating meat very strictly for many years, including having inspectors from the Food Safety and Inspection Service at the plant whenever it is running. The Food and Drug Administration, on the other hand, only occasionally inspects its plants. Those standards will probably change due to the uproar over this situation. Did you know that 30 drosophila fly eggs are allowed in every 100 grams of tomato sauce and that two rat hairs per 50 grams of ground black pepper are allowed? There is a whole handbook out there called “The Food Action Defect Levels,” which is put out by the FDA and details the amount of animal excretion, fly parts, mold and other contamination allowed in every product regulated by them. It’s pretty disgusting to think about. Those numbers will probably change now too, especially if every plant is required to have an FDA inspector on site.
While this salmonella outbreak was awful and tragic, it will probably change things for the better. It has helped to show clearly the failings of the FDA and its policies. This event is going to reshape the whole food industry and set new standards of cleanliness and safety. So, as horrible as the outbreak was, it really has made things better. On the plus side, not only will our food products be safer, but perhaps our economy will boost due to the thousands of new jobs needed to enforce the new policies to come.
Hannah Kaase is a sophomore majoring in animal and dairy science. She can be contacted at [email protected].