ALBANY, Ga., Dec. 14 (UPI) -- A ConAgra subsidiary agreed to pay $11.2 million after pleading guilty in a nationwide salmonella outbreak blamed on peanut butter 10 years ago.
ConAgra Grocery Products LLC, a subsidiary of ConAgra Foods Inc., pleaded guilty to a criminal misdemeanor charge related to the shipment of contaminated peanut butter in 2006-07, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday.
The company was ordered to pay an $8 million criminal fine and forfeit an additional $3.2 million in assets, the largest fine ever paid in a food safety case.
The company pleaded guilty as part of a plea agreement filed last year in federal court in the Middle District of Georgia. Senior U.S. District Court Judge W. Louis Sands accepted the guilty plea and imposed the sentence proposed in the plea agreement.
Related
The company admitted that it introduced Peter Pan and private label peanut butter Great Value sold at Walmart contaminated with salmonella into interstate commerce during the salmonellosis outbreak.
In February 2007, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the outbreak could be traced to Peter Pan and private label peanut butter produced and shipped from the company's Sylvester, Ga., plant. The company voluntarily stopped production at the plant and recalled all peanut butter manufactured there since January 2004.
The CDC identified more than 700 cases of salmonella but said thousands of additional related cases went unreported. No reported deaths were linked to the outbreak.
"Consumers are at the mercy of food merchants when it comes to the wholesomeness and healthiness of the food we consume and, as the result, a great responsibility is imposed by law on those merchants and manufacturers," said U.S. Attorney G. F. "Pete" Peterman III for the Middle District of Georgia. "Likewise, agriculture is Georgia's largest industry and peanuts and peanut products are a major factor in the health of that industry. While ConAgra did take corrective action eventually, by failing to timely recognize and rectify the problem of salmonella contamination, this company damaged the health of both public consumers and of the agricultural industry overall."
As part of the plea agreement, the company admitted it was previously aware of some risk of salmonella contamination in peanut butter in 2004.
"Product safety has to be a high priority for every manufacturer of foods sold in the United States" says Stephen M. Ostroff, deputy commissioner for Foods and Veterinary Medicine at the FDA. "FDA is working with food producers to promote compliance with food safety requirements, but if problems occur and are willfully ignored, we will use all available resources to protect American consumers from unsafe food."
Company employees identified several potential contributing factors: an old peanut roaster, not uniformly heating raw peanuts, a storm-damaged sugar silo and a leaky roof that allowed moisture into the plant and airflow that could allow potential contaminants to move around the plant.
"Nothing is more important to us than the safety and quality of the food we make," ConAgra said Tuesday in a statement. "We are confident that we will continue to offer Peter Pan as a safe, wholesome food in the years to come."
The company upgraded the Sylvester plant and changed safety procedures to address conditions the company identified after the outbreak.
