Tag Archives: third-party

100 sick from Salmonella in 33 states: Kellogg’s Honey Smacks Cereal still suck and still being sold

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has become aware that recalled Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal are still being offered for sale. All Honey Smacks cereal was recalled in June 2018.

Retailers cannot legally offer the cereal for sale and consumers should not purchase Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal.

The FDA has learned that some retailers are still selling this product. The FDA will continue to monitor this situation closely and follow up with retailers as we become aware of recalled products being offered for sale. Additionally, the public is urged to report any product being offered for sale to the FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinator in their region. More information about the recall can be found at FDA.gov.

The FDA, CDC, along with state and local officials are investigating a multi-state outbreak of Salmonella Mbandaka infections linked to Kellogg’s Honey Smacks sweetened puffed wheat cereal.

The CDC reports that 100 people in 33 states have become ill. There have been 30 hospitalizations and no deaths.

Following discussion with FDA, CDC, and state partners, the Kellogg Company voluntarily recalled Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal. The recalled products were distributed across the United States including Guam and Saipan and internationally. Consumers should not eat any Honey Smacks cereal.

As this is an ongoing investigation, the FDA will update this page as more information becomes available, such as product information, epidemiological results, and recalls.

The FDA provided a more detailed a list of foreign countries to which the Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal was distributed.. Here is the list of the foreign countries: Aruba/Curaçao/Saint Maarten (Netherlands Antilles), the Bahamas, Barbados, Tortola (British Virgin Islands), Costa Rica, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Panama, and Tahiti (French Polynesia).

The FDA is advising consumers to not eat and to discard any Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal. This is regardless of size or “best if used by” dates. The recall notice accounts for all of the product that is on the market within the cereal’s estimated one year shelf-life. However, Honey Smacks products with earlier dates could also potentially be contaminated.  

The FDA quickly initiated an inspection at the contract facility where Kellogg’s Honey Smacks is manufactured. As part of the inspection, investigators collected environmental and product samples. Analysis of the environmental samples is now complete, and they were found to be a match to the outbreak strain. In addition, product samples collected and analyzed by state partners were positive for the outbreak strain of Salmonella Mbandaka. As of June 12, 2018, the manufacturing facility is no longer producing product. The FDA continues to work with the firm to address corrective actions.

When the Miami Herald filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the inspection of the facility, the FDA denied the request. The agency claimed two exemptions: “disclosure could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings” and possible disclosure of “trade secret and confidential commercial information.”

Third-party food-safety audits fall under intense scrutiny

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I spent the morning hanging out with a couple of visiting food safety types from Jordan. What was striking was how much we agreed that arguments about government turf, the inadequacy of audits, and the failure of food safety messages with consumers and other humans was a global phenomenon.

Beth Weise writes in tomorrow’s USA Today that if you’ve never heard of a third-party food-safety audit, you’re not alone. Few Americans know or care what they are. To the companies that produce much of our food, they’re an important tool to make sure it’s safe and wholesome — but critics say the certificates the auditors issue often aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.

Recent foodborne illness outbreaks have raised questions in Congress and elsewhere about the effectiveness of these audits and the impartialness of the process.

Auditors are the eyes and ears of a company buying food from a producer. A frozen-pizza maker hires an auditor to make sure the company it buys tomato sauce from has a clean, safe and well-run plant. But many problems — including dead chickens, rats, manure and salmonella — can fall through the cracks of their visits.

Last year, the Peanut Corp. of America, whose products sickened over 600 and may have killed as many as nine, got a "superior" rating at its Texas plant even as it was churning out peanut paste tainted with salmonella.

And last week Congress showed that one of Wright County Egg’s egg-packing plants got a "superior" rating from the same company on June 8, just two months before Wright became part of the largest known egg recall in the United States.

The company, AIB International (of Manhattan, Kansas, sigh), lists five standards on its website that inspectors expect to see in a "facility that maintains a food-safe processing environment." They are: ensuring that raw materials are safely stored and handled; equipment, buildings and grounds are properly maintained; cleaning and sanitizing is adequate; pests monitored and managed; and staffers are working together to deliver a safe final product.

When FDA inspectors actually went into Wright County’s henhouses at its Galt, Iowa, plant, they found vermin, filthy dead chickens and manure oozing out of doorways. More than 1,600 people were sickened in a salmonella enteritidis outbreak linked to the farm, and over 550 million eggs were recalled due to contamination at this plant and at nearby Hillandale Farms, where lesser problems were found.

"Superior" clearly doesn’t mean much, says Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. "How many dead mice do you have to find in your food before you get an ‘Excellent’ rating?"

Third-party food audits, like restaurant inspection, are a snapshot in time. Given the international sourcing of ingredients, audits are a requirement, but so is internal food safety intelligence to make sense of audits that are useful and audits that are chicken poop.

The third-party food safety audit scheme that processors and retailers insisted upon is no better than a financial Ponzi scheme. The vast number of facilities and suppliers means audits are required, but people have been replaced by paper.

Audits, inspections, training and systems are no substitute for developing a strong food safety culture, farm-to-fork, and marketing food safety directly to consumers rather than the local/natural/organic hucksterism is a way to further reinforce the food safety culture.

After the salmonella-in-peanut paste crap, Costco, a retail store, which previously limited AIB’s inspections to its bakery vendors, has now instructed suppliers to not use AIB at all.

“The American Institute of Baking is bakery experts,” said R. Craig Wilson, the top safety official at Costco. “But you stick them in a peanut butter plant or in a beef plant, they are stuffed.”

Or as Mansour Samadpour of Seattle said at the time,

“The contributions of third-party audits to food safety is the same as the contribution of mail-order diploma mills to education.”

I asked weeks ago, who were the buyers of DeCoster eggs who used AIB audits to justify putting salmonella on grocery store shelves? Any retailers want to step forward?

And market food safety at retail so consumers can choose the poop they wish to purchase.
 

Food safety auditors can suck: Salmonella-in-egg producer got A-OK from same auditor that OKed salmonella in peanut paste

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The same third-party auditor that approved salmonella-tainted peanut paste that killed nine and sickened 600 also gave DeCoster egg operations a “superior” rating and “recognition of achievement” in June 2010, just as thousands of Americans began barfing from salmonella in DeCoster eggs.

Beyond the theatre of yesterday’s House hearing about the salmonella-in-eggs outbreak that has sickened well over 1,600 was the revelation that DeCoster’s Iowa egg operations had been audited by the American Institute of Baking based in Manhattan (Kansas).

The N.Y. Times reports that documents released by the committee showed that Wright County Egg achieved a “superior” rating and “recognition of achievement” from AIB International, a private inspection company based in Manhattan, Kan., after a June inspection of its processing facility. That came just as the company was causing thousands of illnesses from contaminated eggs.

In 2008, AIB gave a “superior” rating to a Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely, Ga., that was later found to be riddled with salmonella that caused a nationwide outbreak and the largest food recall in American history. A spokesman for AIB could not be reached.

Elizabeth Weise of USA Today reported today that Wright County Egg, one of the Iowa farms at the center of this summer’s recall of 550 million eggs, earned "superior" ratings for its facilities from a third-party auditor the past three years.

But the auditor was the same one that gave a superior rating to the Peanut Corp. of America, whose shipments were linked to a salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds a few years ago.

AIB International, of Manhattan, Kan., audited Wright’s egg-packing plant twice in 2008, four times in 2009 and at least once in 2010, and every time found it to be "superior," Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., said during the hearing. … Calls to AIB were not returned Wednesday.

AIB International also gave the Peanut Corp. of America’s Plainview, Texas, plant a "superior" rating. An outbreak of salmonella linked to some peanut products shipped from that plant and another PCA plant in 2007 and 2008 sickened as many as 600 people and may have contributed to nine deaths.

This is beyond embarrassing. It’s criminal.

A Kansas State student wrote in 2009 that after a March 6, 2009 article in the N.Y. Times sorta shattered the myth of third-party food safety audits, he couldn’t get anyone at AIB to talk.

Since the release of the Times article, AIB now requires a minimum of two days or longer to complete an inspection at a food processing facility. AIB has also announced it will change the name of its Good Manufacturing Practices inspection certificates from “Certificate of Achievement” to “Recognition of Achievement.”

Is that like Homer Simpson winning the First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence?

Apparently, the answer is yes, given the salmonella-in-eggs poopfest.

Third-party food audits, like restaurant inspection, are a snapshot in time. Given the international sourcing of ingredients, audits are a requirement, but so is internal food safety intelligence to make sense of audits that are useful and audits that are chicken poop.

The third-party food safety audit scheme that processors and retailers insisted upon is no better than a financial Ponzi scheme. The vast number of facilities and suppliers means audits are required, but people have been replaced by paper.

Audits, inspections, training and systems are no substitute for developing a strong food safety culture, farm-to-fork, and marketing food safety directly to consumers rather than the local/natural/organic hucksterism is a way to further reinforce the food safety culture.

After the salmonella-in-peanut paste crap, Costco, a retail store, which previously limited AIB’s inspections to its bakery vendors, has now instructed suppliers to not use AIB at all.

“The American Institute of Baking is bakery experts,” said R. Craig Wilson, the top safety official at Costco. “But you stick them in a peanut butter plant or in a beef plant, they are stuffed.”

Or as Mansour Samadpour of Seattle said at the time,

“The contributions of third-party audits to food safety is the same as the contribution of mail-order diploma mills to education.”

Who were the buyers of DeCoster eggs who used AIB audits to justify putting salmonella on grocery store shelves? Any retailers want to step forward?

Coincidentally, Enreco Inc., a maker of flaxseed flours, bragged in a press release yesterday they had earned a “superior" rating from a recent AIB inspection at its Wisconsin production facility.

Enreco president Sean Moriarty said, “We are absolutely pleased to have achieved AIB’s highest rating for four consecutive years now, even while incidents of food product recalls in the last two years have caused AIB to toughen their inspections considerably."

Sean, you may want to rethink that PR.

Food safety audits never enough

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“Know your suppliers. An audit does not make up for lack of knowledge of a supplier.”

So said Bob Whitaker, chief science officer for the Newark, Del.-based Produce Marketing Association, at the Winning at Retail conference last week.

Or as Mansour Samadpour of Seattle says,??

“The contributions of third-party audits to food safety is the same as the contribution of mail-order diploma mills to education.”

Which is why every time some group like organic growers proclaims to be validated by third-party audits as a sign of superior product, I sigh. Have they not heard of the third-party audits done at Peanut Corporation of America which found the plant produced superior peanut paste – so superior that some 700 people got sick, nine died and over 4,000 products had to be recalled because of Salmonella flourished in the crappy production plant?

Guess that didn’t come up in a recent survey announced by press release and uncritically repeated by others.

A study being conducted by Michigan State University (MSU) on behalf of DNV finds that U.S. consumers are highly aware of food safety issues and they have high recognition of third party certification as an effective signal of food safety assurance. The consumers strongly prefer to see products labeled as safety certified. … US consumers say they want to see evidence on product labels that the food they are buying has passed some kind of independent safety certification process. Moreover, slightly more than one third of consumers indicate a willingness to pay a premium, upwards of 30 percent more.

Food safety surveys along with hypothetical willingness-to-pay studies are crap: people overestimate their own food safety behaviors and vote at the supermarket checkout counter with their wallets.

The vast number of facilities and suppliers means audits are required, but people have been replaced by paper. Audits, inspections, training and systems are no substitute for developing a strong food safety culture, farm-to-fork, and marketing food safety directly to consumers rather than the local/natural/organic hucksterism is a way to further reinforce the food safety culture.

Whitaker also challenged the conventional wisdom that a high audit score — especially on an announced audit — is indicative of an all-is-well food safety program.

He said it’s obvious when a company cleans up in preparation for an audit.

“Unfortunately, I think in this industry we’ve gotten pretty good at dressing up and taking audits.”