Victims of Creamy SoyNut Butter blame FDA for food-recall failures

The slowness of recall of the I.M. Healthy SoyNut Butter is characteristic of the weaknesses in the nation’s food-safety system. Two months elapsed between the first person sickened by SoyNut Butter on Jan. 4 and the recall orders that began on March 3 and expanded three more times by March 10. The contamination was pinpointed on Feb. 22. The nine-day lag time in persuading the manufacturer to recall the tainted products was a significant improvement over previous lag times — which were as high as 165 days in one case, according to the inspector general. However, victims maintain that the FDA should have ordered a recall on its authority, given that a few days or even hours can make a difference in a deadly outbreak. The contaminated products remained available for months. Peter Ebb, a 59-year-old Boston attorney, has eaten the product before being notified of the recall. Six days later, Ebb was hospitalized and developed a deadly type of kidney failure. Now, he’s joining with 18 other victims to file claims against the companies responsible and call attention to the inadequacy of the nation’s recall system. “If I had heard about the problem even one week earlier and stopped then, I might have been able to avoid the disease completely, and life today would be very different,” Ebb said. @ https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/04/fda-food-recall-failures-victims-679636