WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - ConAgra Grocery Products LLC, a subsidiary of ConAgra Foods Inc. (CAG), agreed to plead guilty and pay $11.2 million in connection with the shipment of contaminated peanut butter linked to a 2006 through 2007 nationwide outbreak of salmonellosis, or salmonella poisoning, the Department of Justice announced today.
ConAgra Grocery Products LLC is based in Omaha, Nebraska, with a manufacturing facility in Sylvester, Georgia.
The company signed a plea agreement admitting that it introduced Peter Pan and private label peanut butter contaminated with salmonella into interstate commerce during the 2006 through 2007 outbreak. The plea agreement provides that ConAgra Grocery Products will pay a criminal fine of $8 million and forfeit assets of $3.2 million. The criminal fine is the largest ever paid in a food safety case.
In February 2007, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that an ongoing outbreak of salmonellosis cases in the United States could be traced to Peter Pan and private label peanut butter produced and shipped from the company's Sylvester peanut butter plant. The company voluntarily terminated production at the plant on February 14, 2007, and recalled all peanut butter manufactured there since January 2004.
The CDC eventually identified more than 700 cases of salmonellosis linked to the outbreak with illness onset dates beginning in August 2006. The CDC estimated that thousands of additional related cases went unreported. The CDC did not identify any deaths related to the outbreak.
The criminal information, filed in the Middle District of Georgia, specifically alleges that on or about December 7, 2006, the company shipped from Georgia to Texas peanut butter that was adulterated, in that it contained salmonella and had been prepared under conditions whereby it may have become contaminated with salmonella. The company admitted in the plea agreement that samples obtained after the recall showed that peanut butter made at the Sylvester plant on nine different dates between August 4, 2006, and January 29, 2007, was contaminated with salmonella.
Environmental testing conducted after the recall identified the same strain of salmonella in at least nine locations throughout the Sylvester plant.
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