Pistachio Recall: Have We Learned From Our Mistakes?

(MoneyWatch)  The Food and Drug Administration is telling everyone to stop eating pistachios. The second largest producer of the nut, Setton Farms in California, has recalled its entire 2008 pistachio crop -- more than a million pounds of nuts -- after salmonella was discovered.

The good news is, no one's gotten sick. Yet. At least, not that anyone knows about and can definitively link to pistachios. But, as food studies professor and author Marion Nestle cynically put it, "stay tuned."

Kraft first discovered the salmonella during routine testing and notified the FDA. The FDA is pretty proud of this sequence of events:

FDA associate commissioner for foods David Acheson told reporters in a conference call: "This recall was not triggered because of an outbreak, in contrast to the peanut butter. This is an example of the FDA getting out ahead of the curve."

It seems to me that might be giving the FDA too much credit. After all, it was Kraft that spotted the problem and took the initiative, not the FDA. And it was a week before the FDA alerted the public and set up its pistachio recall page. A lot of people could get sick in a week. Then again, compared to the reaction time in the peanut salmonella scandal, a week is a pretty stellar improvement.

Food companies are being extremely cautious this time around. Wal-Mart is pulling all of its pistachio products from the shelves until there's more information -- despite assurances from Setton that all of the Sam's Choice pistachios are perfectly safe. SuperValu is also halting pistachio sales.

It's still not known how the nuts became contaminated -- they'd already been roasted, which should have killed the salmonella. Inspectors are investigating and running tests. The FDA isn't advising people to throw away their pistachios, but merely to hold off on eating them until the agency can figure out which products are contaminated.

Let's hope they get it sorted out more quickly than last time -- the list of contaminated peanut butter products is still growing.

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