Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials in the United States have confirmed the presence of salmonella in a popular snack made by food giant Kellogg.
The FDA says salmonella was found in a package of peanut butter sandwich crackers made by Kellogg as the company issued a precautionary recall across the food industry.
The suspect Kellogg product is the Austin Quality Foods Toasty Crackers with Peanut Butter which was among several snacks the company voluntarily recalled as a precaution after the FDA warned consumers to avoid eating products that contained peanut butter.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) a salmonella food poisoning outbreak which started in September last year has now affected almost 500 people across 43 states and is a suspected culprit in 6 deaths.
The salmonella food poisoning has been traced to the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), which supplies peanut butter products to manufacturers and institutions, such as nursing homes.
The FDA says some samples of its products had tested positive for a salmonella strain that may have originated in a Blakely, Georgia, peanut processing plant.
The issue first surfaced January 14th when as a precaution some products were held back and others removed from retail stores; shortly after Kellogg recalled several suspected peanut butter snacks and cookies which included peanut butter and jelly sandwich crackers, cheese and peanut butter sandwich crackers, and peanut butter-chocolate sandwich crackers sold under the brand name Austin or Keebler.
Kellogg suspects a breach has occurred in the supplier's process and says it does not use PCA ingredients in any other Kellogg products apart from those already recalled.
The voluntary recall was expanded in the last week to include two types of Meijer Brand crackers and two types of Meijer Brand ice creams, along with two varieties of peanut butter-flavoured snack bars, made by General Mills which also contained products sourced from PCA.