On March 23, 2009, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration asked Irvington, N.J.-based Westco Fruit and Nut Co., Inc. (Westco/Westcott) to voluntarily recall all of its products containing peanuts from Peanut Company of America (PCA) because of the contamination threat. Incredibly, Westco/Westcott refused. On April 8, 2009, the FDA served Westco/Westcott with an inspection warrant in an attempt to gain access to the company’s distribution records.

On April 27, 2009, at the request of the FDA, U.S. Marshals seized $34,500 worth of PCA peanuts and products containing PCA peanuts at Westco/Westcott because of possible Salmonella contamination. Not long after, PCA went bankrupt and declared it could not afford to warn or reach any of its customers.

This short video looks at the anatomy of a peanut outbreak. It may be of interest to older adults as well as to families with small children aqnd to pet-owners who may handle peanut-contaminated food. It may be especially relevant for people who have reduced immune systems.

ANATOMY OF AN OUTBREAK (wmv file 5:26 — will open as video in Windows Media Player, or save to disk)

LINKS

FDA’s Peanut Products Recall & Investigation

A large, long-term study in the U.K. has found that people who eat fish or who are vegetarians are less likely to develop cancer than people who describe themselves as meat-eaters. Surprisingly, for some types of cancer, risk was lower for those who ate fish than for strict vegetarians.

Led by a team at Oxford University, researchers studied 61,566 British men and women for several years. More than half of the people enrolled or 32,403 identified as meat eaters, 8562 as non-meat eaters who did eat fish (“fish eaters”‘) and 20,601 as vegetarians.

Some of the difference favoring fish consumption over vegetarianism may arise from known benefits of fish oil and some from known or risks from high consumption of dairy foods.