LYNCHBURG, Va. — Peanut Corp. of America is no longer able to notify or otherwise assist companies that it distributed recalled products to, since its assets are under the control of a bankruptcy trustee, it announced here last week. PCA customers should contact U.S. Food and Drug Administration recall coordinators regarding the proper disposition of recalled items, the FDA advised.
The news came as affected products continued to slowly find their way onto the recall list, nearly a month after the recall was expanded to include all items processed in PCA’s Blakely, Ga., facility since Jan.1, 2007. Yesterday the list included 2,591 items.
Previously, PCA notified companies that it had shipped potentially tainted products to, and those companies would in turn contact clients that they distributed product to.
“If there were six stops in the supply chain, and each member took two and half days to figure out where products went, that’s 15 days,” FDA spokesman Sebastian Cianci told SN.
All product recalls are voluntary and initiated by manufacturers; the FDA simply organizes and distributes the information. It advises companies to send releases to the Associated Press and the local FDA office. But there is still some confusion surrounding the process.
Weeks after submitting a press release related to the recall of its peanut snacks on Feb. 2, Aaron Sorenson, spokesman for Lunds and Byerly’s, realized that the items hadn’t been added to the FDA’s searchable list of recalled items.
“I felt that the release should be there, but I didn’t learn how items got there until yesterday,” Sorenson told SN last week. “I learned I had to send the release to a certain contact at the FDA. After I did that, the release ended up recirculating.”
Instructions for submitting recall-related releases can be found at www.fda.gov.
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