Hundreds of businesses across Texas have been manufacturing and selling food without a state license and, in some cases, have escaped health inspections intended to ensure the safety of those products.

The Dallas Morning News reports this morning the businesses were flushed out in a statewide crackdown on unlicensed food manufacturers, begun last year by the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Carrie Williams, a spokeswoman for the health department, said,

"Many of the companies we have discovered are small operations that were simply unaware they needed a state license. For the most part, they have been more than willing to get into compliance with us. … Some of them did have safety issues. Most were corrected on the spot or we’re working with them to get them into compliance."

The state has identified 355 companies that appear to be producing and selling a wide variety of eatable products – from barbecue sauce in Fort Worth to pepper jelly in Dallas to ice cream in Houston – all without obtaining a manufacturing license from the state.

The state went searching for unlicensed food manufacturers in the embarrassing aftermath of last year’s discovery of an unlicensed peanut-processing plant in West Texas.

The Plainview plant, owned by a subsidiary of Peanut Corporation of America, had operated for four years without any state-required safety inspections.

None of these new cases investigated so far rise to the level of the peanut plant, which closed in February 2009 after salmonella was detected in the plant. A subsequent state inspection found rodent parts and feathers in a crawl space above the peanut production line.