Companies Recalling Peanut Products Tell Bankruptcy Court They Are Victims Too!
To list all the peanut products they've recalled takes a couple pages each for Kellogg Co. and Clif Bar Inc.
For Kellogg's, it includes products like Famous Amos Peanut Butter Cookies and Keebler Soft Batch Homestyle Peanut Butter Cookies. For Clif Bar, MOJO Dipped Chocolate Peanut and MOJO Dipped Peanut Butter and Jelly are on the lengthy recall lists.
Neither Kellogg's nor Clif Bar paid much if any attention to conditions at the Peanut Corporation of America, which produced the peanut products used as ingredients by the other food companies. PCA peanut butter and peanut paste was found to be the source of a Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak that made at least 700 people sick and killed nine people.
Yesterday, Kellogg's and Clif Bar weighed in as the latest "victims," filing claims in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Lynchburg, respectively for $60 million and $27 million to cover their recall costs. Those were among the claims that raised the total amount of creditor claims against PCA to nearly $311 million.
Most of the food companies who bought peanut butter and paste from PCA as ingredients for their goods did not file claims for the cost of recall. As of June 12th, 3,916 products were on the recall list. The deadline for businesses to file claims was yesterday.
Meanwhile, the deadline for filing personal income claims with the Bankruptcy Court has been extended to Oct. 31.
"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.
