Congress: FDA Lacks Access to Food Safety Records

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lacks access to food safety tests that could have helped identify problems at a peanut plant at the center of one of the biggest food recalls in U.S. history, members of Congress said on Thursday.

The salmonella outbreak traced to a Peanut Corp. of America plant in Blakely, Georgia, has sickened more than 550 people, more than half of them children, and may be linked to eight deaths.

"We would like to have more information. There is no question," Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, told a hearing of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Under law, a company does not have to notify the agency if it discovers salmonella or other contamination. The only time FDA can require information from a plant is if tainted product was shipped from it.

In the case of Peanut Corp. of America, the FDA says the plant found 12 instances of salmonella since 2007, only to retest the product to obtain a negative result before illegally shipping the products for sale.

The FDA and the Justice Department are conducting a criminal investigation of the company.

"I'd like to see some people go to jail," said Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont. "This was a company that should have shut things down immediately."

Source: Reuters