Salmonella and Peanut Butter: Victims’ Stories

One week ago, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the end of the Salmonell…

One week ago, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the end of the Salmonella outbreak tied to Trader Joe’s peanut butter made by Sunland Inc. in New Mexico. In total, at least 42 people in 20 states fell ill, with 10 requiring hospitalization.

Headlines from recent years have made the combination of peanut butter and Salmonella a notorious duo, predominantly due to two massive outbreaks in the second half of the 2000s: Peter Pan peanut butter in 2006-07, and products made with Peanut Corporation of America peanut butter in 2008-09.

Together, the two outbreaks resulted in at least 1,139 confirmed cases of Salmonella infection. The CDC estimates that for every one laboratory-confirmed case of Salmonella another 29 cases go unreported, meaning the outbreaks potentially sickened tens of thousands of people.

At least 425 people in 44 states fell ill with strains of Salmonella Tennessee in 2006 and 2007 after eating Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter manufactured by ConAgra in Georgia. Of those ill, 20 percent required hospitalization.

One of those people was Mora Lou Marshall, an 85-year-old cancer survivor and grandmother from Louisiana. After her dentist recommended eating a spoonful of peanut butter every day for supplemental vitamins, Marshall continued to eat the Peter Pan brand throughout months of illness before health investigators finally traced the nationwide Salmonella outbreak back to that product.

Clifford Tousignant went through an all-too-similar experience two years later when he was hospitalized just after Christmas 2008 with what became diagnosed as a Salmonella infection. Tousignant, a sociable, 78-year-old Korean War veteran and three-time Purple Heart recipient from Minnesota, had recently moved into an assisted living facility where he was eating a peanut butter sandwich almost every day.

As it turned out, Tousignant was part of a Salmonella outbreak that eventually sickened at least 714 people across 46 states. Just after New Year’s 2009, investigators finally began to connect the rampant outbreak to thousands of products all made with peanut butter manufactured by Peanut Corporation of America.

For Tousignant, however, the discovery did not come fast enough. Health complications from his infection led to his passing on January 12. The outbreak also contributed to the deaths of 8 other victims.