Health officials want people to check their cupboards and throw out certain kinds of jarred peanut butter because they could be contaminated with salmonella.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter brands stamped with a product code that begins "2111" are associated with an outbreak of salmonella infection, according to a news release issued Wednesday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The outbreak, which began in August, has sickened 288 people in 39 states.
Of Pennsylvania's 25 cases, none occurred in Allegheny County and one occurred in Beaver County in early December, said Richard McGarvey, spokesman for the state Department of Health. The Beaver County resident is fine now, he added.
Patients have ranged in age from 13 months to 88 years old, and cases have occurred in every part of the state.
"What we've seen from this particular outbreak is a low-level infection," Mr. McGarvey said. A few patients were hospitalized for other reasons when they were diagnosed with the infection, and no one has died.
Symptoms of salmonellosis include diarrhea, abdominal cramps, fever, nausea and vomiting, said Guillermo Cole, spokesman for the Allegheny County Health Department. The incubation period is anywhere from six to 72 hours, most typically 12 to 36 hours.
"If you ate the recalled peanut butter and you've developed these symptoms, contact your doctor or visit a hospital emergency room," he advised. "If there's a salmonella diagnosis made, then that case gets reported to us and we'd conduct an investigation to try to determine the source of the illness."
Since the beginning of the year, seven cases of salmonella-caused disease have been reported in Allegheny County, Mr. Cole said. There were 126 in all of 2006. Cases going back to May, when the peanut butter was manufactured, will be revisited.
He said the culprit strain in the current outbreak is Salmonella Tennessee, but it's possible that other strains could be implicated in the future.
According to Mr. McGarvey, none of the cases that have occurred in Allegheny County since the outbreak began was caused by the Tennessee strain.
ConAgra Foods, which makes both brands at a facility in Georgia, is voluntarily recalling the jars that have already been distributed, destroying affected jars in their possession, and ceasing production until the cause of the contamination is found.
Customers should discard the peanut butter but send in the lids of the affected jars to obtain a refund, a ConAgra press statement says. Peanut butter under the Great Value brand is also made by other companies, but those were not linked to the outbreak, it notes.
Send name and mailing address along with lid to ConAgra Foods, Box 3768, Omaha, NE 68103. Customers can call ConAgra 24 at a 24-hour, toll free hotline at 866-344-6970.
Correction/Clarification: (Published Feb. 17, 2007) The address and phone number for ConAgra Foods was omitted from this story as originally published Feb. 16, 2007 about the health alert concerning Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter with product code "2111." Send name and mailing address along with lid to ConAgra Foods, Box 3768, Omaha, NE 68103. Customers can call ConAgra at a 24-hour, toll free hotline at 866-344-6970.
Bill Pugliano, Getty Images)
