Personal Injury Law

Consumers Questioning the True Safety of Products

By Jessica Smagacz

The Georgia local news discussed the recent salmonella outbreak and what Georgia is currently doing to prevent incidents like this from occurring again.

Currently, there is a bill being introduced at the Georgia capital that will give the agriculture department more power to enforce testing by these processing companies and make the companies turn over any bad results.

This move to introduce this bill comes after the national salmonella outbreak was linked to the Peanut Corporation of America’s (PCA) Georgia processing plant. Once salmonella bacteria was confirmed at PCA’s Georgia plant, FDA and Georgia state continued their investigations. Along with finding the plant in a complete mess, with mold, leaking roof, and roaches, the FDA came across PCA reports that revealed the company had a salmonella problem for the past two years. Even with the knowledge of having a salmonella problem, PCA continued selling their products.

In the local broadcast, Attorney Andy Childers at Childers & Schlueter, LLP, a Georgia law firm was interviewed. His law firm has represented several people affected by past salmonella outbreaks and current. He said, “All 3 outbreaks prove that both that the FDA & Georgia’s agriculture department are not doing a good enough job policing food safety especially when it took a federal Bio-terrorism Act to pry lose the test results from the Blakely processing plant.” They “found salmonella on 12 occasions and the FDA and state didn’t know anything about it. How you can call that enforcement is beyond me.”

Susan Doss, a 35 year old affected by a previous salmonella outbreak from jalapenos was also interviewed. She had severe symptoms and later experienced related reactive arthritis that practically paralyzed her. After this current salmonella outbreak, she finds herself questioning the safety of products.

Symptoms of salmonella include Diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps. If you or someone close to you has salmonella poisoning, you may want to contact the attorneys at Childers & Schlueter, LLP to see how they can help protect your legal rights.

Full post as published by Atlanta Personal Injury Lawyer on February 03, 2009 (boomark / email).