FEMA Meals May Have Tainted Peanut Butter

Emergency Kits Given To Ice Storm Victims Possibly Contaminated With Salmonella, Agency Says

(CBS/ AP)  The Federal Emergency Management Agency says some emergency meal kits given to storm victims in Kentucky and Arkansas may contain recalled peanut butter.

FEMA says the kits may contain packets of peanut butter that are part of a national recall over possible salmonella contamination.

The agency said in a statement Wednesday that the kits were manufactured by Red Cloud Food Services Inc. of South Elgin, Ill., under the Standing Rock label.

The agency says people who have received meal kits should inspect them and immediately dispose of any peanut butter packets.

Meanwhile, federal health officials are defending their handling of the outbreak, telling Congress they had been hot on the trail of a peanut processor even before they were certain that peanuts to blame for hundreds of illnesses.

The Food and Drug Administration "began its investigation prior to having a strong epidemiological link to a particular food," Stephen Sundlof, head of the agency's food safety center, said in testimony prepared for delivery to the Senate Agriculture Committee.

More than 500 people have been sickened as a result of the outbreak, and at least eight may have died because of salmonella infections. More than 430 products have been pulled off the shelves in a recall that reaches to Canada and Europe.

The first signs of the outbreak were detected in November by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But disease detectives initially suspected chicken was the culprit in clusters of salmonella infections.

[fagsnaids]

why dont we have a concert THAT WAS EFFECTIVE

[andie52]

So where were YOU for the past 8 years while Bush was on the receiving end of the partisan taunting?

I don''''t remember you making a stand.

Maybe your anti-partisan tirade IS partisan...???


Posted by repo_man_08 at 05:01 PM : Feb 05, 2009
======================================================

This, as usual is sounding like school yard taunts, it%u2019s getting old. And do we really want to go toe to toe on who did what, how and when?

[swanson1831]

Why does every issue come down to politics? What about personal responsibility? What about the employees of the Peanut Plant? It sounds more like someone dropped the ball at the plant. I''m sure it was someone''s job to routinely inspect the building, and someone''s job to do periodic inspections and test the product before it left the plant. I''m sure someone there had the job of keeping the machinery clean...
And yes, there are government inspectors that must have dropped the ball as well. But I would sooner believe that it was their own individual faults and not their political affiliations that are to blame.
I get soooo sick and tired of seeing all these political crackpot comments, Bush did this and Obama did that...we all have faults, no one is perfect. Get off your soap boxes. All of you, whether you''re Dem or Rep...we''re sick of hearing it.

[walt1944-2009]

So what else is new?

FEMA has dropped the ball so many times the past 8 years, why should it change now?

If they don''t give you a trailer filled with formaldehyde to live in when your house is destroyed, they try to poison you with tainted peanut butter.

Ronnie "Bonzo" Reagan might not have been too smart, but he was dead on when he said that the 10 most feared words in the English language were, "I''m from the Federal Government, and I''m here to HELP!!!"

HAIL OBAMA???

[idnnsg]

Bush lied about ground zero. Bush lied about the FEMA trailers. If Bush was still prez, we''d never even hear about the tainted peanut butter, and if we did hear about it, he''d trot out some paid sycophant "scientist" to say, "salmonella is good for you, so what are you worthless, lazy people complaining about!!?"

How the h3ll repo_man_08 has the NERVE to blame Obama for not yet replacing every single imbecile at FEMA and cleaing up their mess, I don''t know. Repukes are DESPERATE to start blaming Obama for EVERYTHING, because they hope that means they will gain power in 2012. Well, IT AIN''T GONNA HAPPEN! The GOP is morally and intellectually bankrupt. ALL of their ideas have been proven failures. They are TOAST!
QED

[idnnsg]

"You Bush bashers raised the bar ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP for Bush" - repo_man_08

You''ve got that @ssbackwards! Bush LOWERED THE BAR ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM for all of us!

The Chimp still thinks history will vindicate him, but we''ve already seen enough effects of his destructive mismanagement of this country to know that Bush is the WORST PRESIDENT OF ALL TIME, bar none! He bankrupted the country, outsourced our jobs, destroyed our military readiness, committed massive war crimes, turned the entire world against the USA, let our infrastructure disintegrate, illegally spied on EVERY SINGLE US citizen, championed torture in the name of God, gave massive tax cuts to his wealthy buddies, let businesses lie, cheat, and poison us all without regulation, let a major American city drown, etc., etc.) No one will EVER be able to do worse than G. W. Bush. May he eternally rot in disquitude for his sins.

[bobnjersey]

[What, was Obama DRIVING THE TRUCK???? LOL! You got some funny priorities there, expecting the POTUSA to DRIVE AN ELECTRIC COMPANY TRUCK HIMSELF all the way FROM ANOTHER STATE!!!! Sorry, Obama had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!]
[Posted by repo_man_08 at 02:45 PM : Feb 05, 2009]

so ... if i understand this warped logic you''re using ''liberally'' ... all the things that are done that are good are not to obama''s credit because he didn''t do them personally ... but all the things that aren''t done ... and are considered ''dropping the ball'' are his fault ... even if he really doesn''t necessaryily have anything to do with that ... and didn''t do them personally.

is this the logic you''re using?

[bobnjersey]

[It''''s, like, our patriotic duty to hold you accountable.]
[Posted by repo_man_08 at 02:43 PM : Feb 05, 2009]

my guess is that you have no clue whatsoever what patriotism means ... or what a partiotic duty entails.

[All he had to do was say to his secretary, "Hey, type me up an order to inspect all the emergency food supplies in FEMA inventory." DONE! THAT''''S IT! THAT''''S ALL HE HAD TO DO! That would have taken, what, 30 SECONDS?????]

that''s all he had to do? which secretary covers that? why didn''t the people running fema now know to do that themselves? does the president issue every order for every action that every department takes every day?

[bobnjersey]

[Clearly Obama dropped the ball on this one. Yes, those trailers should have been the red warning flag. Obama should have DONE SOMETHING before a disaster like this happened. He had adequate warning.]
[Posted by repo_man_08 at 02:11 PM : Feb 05, 2009]

dropped the ball? how long was he holding the ball?

what logic ties outgassing issues in temporary trailers to tainted peanut butter? wouldn''t this assume complete incompetence all the way around? if so ... did this incompetence set in within only the last two weeks? if not ... who is responsible for what fema is today?

what warning did he have of an ice storm? have the meteorologists figured out how to accurately and reliably predict weather now?

[jxknowles]

President Obama and Kentucky Governor Beshear, both Democrats by the way, performed admirably in the wake of this historic event. The only real LOSER was Senator Mitch McConnell, a conservative Republican by the way. Mitch was arguing against additional funds for his state while, the Governor, the Red Cross, Kentuckians en masse were crying out for aid.

Sorry whiners, you can''t cry and complain about this one. Look elsewhere.

[matrixrx2003]

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Tainted Peanut Butter

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Soilent Green.

[matrixrx2003]

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Tainted Peanut Butter

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Soilent Green !

[tromba59]

bobnjersey,

I think "babbling idiot" is a fairly safe bet!

[nordeck52]

Why am I not surprised..... -_-

[evian_ycnan]

Say what you want about Bush, but it didn`t take him weeks to get his butt to the area hit by Katrina.

Posted by Credibility2 at 01:11 PM : Feb 05, 2009

Uh, yes it did.

[timtmartin]

The *news* is that FEMA tracked its inventory well enough to take this action. This is much better than the months of idling forgotten trucks in Maine holding ice for Katrina victims.

[mtminds]

One would think that extra precautions would be taken to make sure emergency food stocks are not tainted prior to being warehoused for distribution. One would think FEMA would have done due diligence and a their own quality assurance checking, just like DoD, DoE and other departments do.

Where is FEMA''s oversight in the procurement and quality assurance phase of emergency preparations? First it was toxic trailers, now toxic peanut butter.

Why doesn''t FEMA put all these citizens suffering the cold without power and water and food on a cruise ship like they did for hurricane victims?

[mtminds]

Kentucky wouldn''t have one half of its power problems if the Kentucky power companies had done their job of pruning back branches and clearing trees along major power line routes. State employees should have noted this problem as a danger against the power infrastructure and mandated a remedy.

People say they want less government until they need help, then they can''t get enough. Silly silly people.

[jsd330]

How many times are you going to say I wasn''t in Kentucky helping out.

posted byLFR012008
So I commend you. And Obama did what he was supposed to do, according to the Governor of KY. And my state
Ohio has sent power crews, And the National Guard sent extra Hummers for the KY Guard to use.So I''m sure KY has all the help they can use.

[jsd330]

LFR012008

How many times are you going to bring up a super bowl party. What were you doing during the super bowl? I''ll bet you weren''t in KY helping out .