According to the Dallas Morning News, a Texas agriculture inspector failed to note that a peanut plant at the center of a national salmonella outbreak was operating without a state health department license despite at least three visits in the years before hundreds of people got sick, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The inspector responsible for certifying the plant to process organic products noted after each visit that the plant had such a license when it didn't. Problems at the plant operated by Peanut Corp. of America might have been flagged years ago had the inspector, who has since been fired, reported the plant's failure to obtain the required license.
When the plant was finally inspected earlier this year, Texas health officials found dead rodents, rodent excrement and bird feathers in a crawl space above a production area, leading them to order a recall of all products the plant had shipped since 2005.
Tests have since shown that ground peanuts at the Plainview plant were contaminated with the same strain of salmonella that sickened more than 650 people, is suspected of causing at least nine deaths, and led to one of the largest product recalls in U.S. history. Salmonella has also been detected in peanut samples from a Georgia plant operated by Peanut Corp., which has filed for bankruptcy amid fallout from the outbreak.
Texas Department of Agriculture spokesman Bryan Black said if the lack of a license had been properly noted, the department would have denied it organic certification and notified the Department of State Health Services. The inspector, Gaylon Amonett, was fired on Feb. 13, the day after state health officials ordered the recall.
