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Ministry of Health, Wellness, Family Affairs, National Mobilisation, Human Services and Gender Relations reassures public regarding peanut products

Contact: Lucius Doxerie

Wednesday, March 4, 2009 – The Ministry of Health, Wellness, Family Affairs, National Mobilisation, Human Services and Gender Relations wishes to allay the public’s fear regarding the consumption of peanut products in response to the current recall on several brands of peanut products.

The United States is presently experiencing an outbreak of a clinical disease caused by Salmonella Typhimurium associated with peanut products produced by the Peanut Corporation of America, a manufacturing plant located in the state of Georgia. Although the great majority of the products had been distributed in the United States, the Ministry of Health has received. information that quantities of the products were distributed in Saint Lucia.

As a matter of urgency, the Department of Environmental Health started monitoring the peanut and associated peanut butter products as soon as the department received information regarding the recall of such products in the USA in January 2009.

The information that the department first received concerned a number of brands. As a consequence, officers of the department were deployed to ascertain the presence of any of the listed peanut products named in the recall.

According to Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Felix St. Hill, immediate actions taken were as follows:

• The Environmental Health Department detained all the named, products found at local distributors pending the result of verification that the products were cleared and deemed safe for consumption
   
• The Department of Environmental Health, on February 10, 2009, condemned and supervised the disposal of forty-four (44) cartoons of Jumbo Oil Roasted Blanched Peanuts, distributed by Peanut Corporation of America. This product arrived on the island on January 27, 2009
   
• Based on the results of the verification exercise by the Department of Environmental Health, the detained products which were not implicated were released to the distributors.
   
• Presently, arrangements are being made to dispose of twenty-one (21) cases of Austin Peanut Butter Crackers, and ten (10) cases of Austin Toasty Peanut Butter Crackers, all of which were condemned by the Department of Environmental Health on January 20, 2009. These products arrived in St. Lucia on January 7, 2009.

The Department of Environmental Health’s focus, the permanent secretary said, is island-wide as it continues to monitor the situation on the recalled peanut products. Meanwhile, consumers are asked to pay particular attention to the named products in the recall.

The Ministry of Health, Felix stressed, is concerned with product safety and the wellness of consumers. In this regard, the Ministry of Health, Wellness, Family Affairs, National Mobilisation, Human Services and Gender Relations has partnered with other agencies such as the Saint Lucia Bureau of Standards and the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) in monitoring the situation.

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