Personal Injury Law

"Team D" Profiled On Blog at Consumer Reports: Credited For Role In Finding Salmonella In Peanut Butter

By Marler Clark LLP

The Consumer Reports Blog has a nice profile up on "Team D," the environmental science students at the University of Minnesota who've been at the center of tracking down recent outbreaks of food-borne illness, including salmonella.  Here's how CR begins the story:

"Graduate students in the University of Minnesota School of Public Health vie to get on an elite team, even if they have to put up with its icky nickname—Team D. That's D as in diarrhea. The team's claim to fame is the speed at which it has tracked down the culprits in several recent high-profile outbreaks of foodborne illness involving salmonella and E. coli.

"Team D played a vital role in figuring out that jalapeño peppers were behind a nationwide outbreak of salmonella last summer, accurately contradicting the best guesses of federal food-safety officials that tomatoes were the likely source. Earlier this year, Team D played a similarly critical role in identifying institutional jars of peanut butter as the source of a cluster of salmonella cases in Minnesota, a finding that ultimately led to one of the largest food recalls in U.S. history by the Peanut Corporation of America."

Check out the rest of "Fast-acting 'Team D' sleuths out sources of foodborne illness" here.

Speaking of Peanut Corporation of America, the Texas corporation that operated its Plainview plant has also now filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.  Creditors may attend a meeting on June 24, 2009 at 10 a.m. in Room 266 of the U.S. Courthouse in Lynchburg, VA.  A list of the creditors can be found here.

Full post as published by Salmonella Blog on June 09, 2009 (boomark / email).