Food Safety & Defense Alerts - Con Agra Banquet Outbreak Bulletin - 135 Salmonella typhimurium illnesses in 35 States
Click on the above logo to go to Con Agra's press release. Interestingly, Con Agra does not do a recall of its Salmonella Pot Pies, but instead tells customers to return the product or throw it away. I guess FSIS/USDA is tired of doing recalls since it has spent the last two weeks assisting in the recall of nearly 23,000,000 pounds of hamburger?
I have an idea - since Con Agra and USDA/FSIS are not doing a recall, why not mail the Salmonella Pot Pies directly to your Congressman or Senator? Remember, "we have the safest food supply in the world."
Salmonella cases traced to Banquet brand pot pies - Consumers urged to discard productI
INGREDIENTS:
Filling: Chicken broth (water, chicken flavor [chicken stock, salt, hydrolyzed soy protein, flavors, autolyzed yeast extract, chicken fat, cooked chicken powder, whey protein concentrate and citric acid), cooked chicken (chicken meat, chicken, water, salt, sodium triphosphate), carrots, potatoes (calcium chloride), mechanically separated chicken (mechanically separated chicken, sodium tripolyphosphate, natural flavoring, citric acid), contains 2% or less of the following: modified food starch, peas, chicken fat, flavorings, soybean oil, emulsifier (sodium stearoyl, lactylate), sugar, natural flavoring, paprika, beta carotene (corn oil, beta carotene), oleoresin tumeric.
Crust: Wheat flour, shortening (BHT), water, dextrose, salt, maillose (water, caramel color).
Allergy Warning - Contains: Soy, Milk, Wheat.
hmmmm, no Salmonella Warning?
According to the Minnesota Department of Health, six cases of Salmonella infection in Minnesota residents have been linked to eating Banquet brand turkey or chicken pot pies, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) said today. The finding prompted health and agriculture officials to warn consumers not to eat any Banquet brand pot pies. An investigation is ongoing. Banquet brand pot pies are sold in the freezer section at grocery stores and other outlets throughout the country. Pot pies made at the same plant are also sold under a dozen store labels, but all carry a code number beginning with 5009. “Best if used by” dates for implicated product are not known at this time.
I received the following Email:
I just wanted to contact you because I am fed up..My
granddaughter and I got sick over the peanut butter
and now we were all eating pot pies and on the news
it was talking about them ..checked the package and yep
..these were some of the batch so everyone quit eating
and threw what was left away ..may be too late because
last week I bought about 20 of them and the kids all snack on
them .Anyways somebody needs to do something about Con Agra
...I know I am steering away from their products from now on.
"The following is excerpted from an April 21, 2005 News Release:
Salmonella cases linked to frozen chicken entrees
. Minnesota Department of Health
. Four cases of salmonellosis in Minnesota have been linked to frozen,
prebrowned, single-serving, microwavable stuffed chicken entrees . . .
. The items identified in the outbreak, such as chicken broccoli and
cheese, and possibly chicken Kiev and chicken cordon bleu, . ...
. "These items are breaded, prebrowned and individually wrapped, so
it's possible someone could have mistakenly assumed they have been
precooked," . . . "Although the wrapper includes instructions to
fully cook the product, some consumers might have overlooked that
information and simply heated it in a microwave. . . ."
. "While we've identified one line of products in this case, the
problem has to do more with the labeling and cooking instructions than
with the product itself,"
In contrast to poultry, an earlier outbreak implicating partially
cooked beef patties led to the following rule: Safe Labeling Beef
Patties 9 CFR 318.23 (c) (4)
"Partially cooked patties must bear the labeling statement ''Partially
cooked: For Safety Cook Until Well Done (Internal Meat Temperature 160
degrees F.).'' The labeling statement must be adjacent to the product
name, and prominently placed with such conspicuousness (as compared
with other words, statements, designs or devices in the labeling) as
to render it likely to be read and understood by the ordinary
individual under customary conditions of purchase and use."
Char-marked patties are covered in the next paragraph.
After the second outbreak from raw processed poultry, we again
strongly recommended to the FSIS Standards and Labeling Division that
these products be conspicuously labeled "Raw". The reply was the
industry does not like "raw" but prefers "Uncooked".
For examples of "Uncooked" labels on raw poultry products, I went to
my home freezer. The Ivan Parkin lecture slides on the IAPF web
page, slides 30 -34 show examples of "Uncooked" labels. To be fair,
the back of the package is far more descriptive than the front. But
you must wonder what they're thinking to make "Larger 4.5 Bag" more
conspicuous than that the product is raw.
Contrast the uncooked warning with the FSIS requirement to warn the
consumer that the product had been previously frozen:
Frozen Poultry Labeling: 9 CFR 381.129 (6) (ii) Raw poultry product
whose internal temperature has ever been at or below 0ºF must be
labeled with the descriptive term ``frozen,'' . . . The descriptive
term must be prominently displayed on the principal display panel of
the label. If additional labeling . . . it must be prominently
affixed to the label. The additional labeling must be so conspicuous
-- that it is likely to be read and understood by the ordinary
individual under customary conditions of purchase and use.
FSIS has taken no action to improve labeling for public heath purposes. "
I AGREE..NO MORE CONAGRA for me either. My family also got very sick from the Peter Pan Peanut Butter, so much so that I am still having Arthritic side effects. This is after Cortisone injections and numerous medications. I tried to go back to work recently but have found the pain to be to great. Guess I will be looking for a new profession...Something has to pay the medical bills. I also fell victim to these Pot Pies..Again my sons and I replaced peanut butter as a lunch time favorite with these pot pies...Guess that explains the sudden increase in these symptoms...?
Has other Banquet products, like chicken & turkey
dinners been checked? Should I discard any and all
Banquet products I have? I definitely will discard
the two pot pies I have. Do they have any idea
how much money has been spent on this stuff and they
don't say take it back and get a refund - this is
hard earned money we're all told to throw away - this
stuff isn't cheap.What's next -
Good day!,
I'm just starting here. And it feels like a great forum.
I just wanted to give a nice hello to all of you here.
:)
-Dana