Minnesota health agency cracks salmonella mystery

Posted at 6:55 PM on January 9, 2009 by Bob Collins (9 Comments)
Filed under: Health

When he was on MPR's Midday on Friday, former state epidemiologist Michael Osterholm said this about the Minnesota Department of Public Health investigation into a nationwide salmonella outbreak:

The first cases occurred in early October. This has been gaining a head of steam with most cases occurring in the last six weeks. This is a common strain of salmonella. We have the ability to fingerprint the organisms. It took time for the "fingerprints" to be obtained. It has increased in the number of states which tells us a lot about the product involved. It's probably a store-shelf product.

The cases in Minnesota are more recent nature. It's likely that the Minnesota Department of Public Health will be the one to crack it.

He got all but the store-shelf product part right. Late Thursday afternoon the department determined it was from peanut butter, that's delivered to hospitals, nursing homes, schools and other locations. But it's not available on the store shelf.

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Comments (9)

Because I am who I am...I checked out King Nut. Looks like they supply a lot of airline snacks too.
That's interesting.

Posted by Bonnie | January 9, 2009 7:37 PM

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It's almost as if Mr. Osterholm knows someone at MDH.

Posted by Paul | January 9, 2009 7:44 PM

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Sounds like they are getting their food stocks from some shady providers. Is it any wonder, given the low budget of the average nursing home and educational institution in this state. Are you listening T-Paw and legislators? Let's take care of the aged and our children.

Posted by Lily | January 9, 2009 7:44 PM

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Let's hope the MN legislature/gov budget doesn't slash our health department to become useless, like many others must be...thanks.

Posted by Bonnie | January 9, 2009 7:45 PM

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I assume he hired most everyone there. So, let me guess, he already knew it was the peanut butter when he was on Midday?

Posted by Bob Collins | January 9, 2009 8:41 PM

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BTW, Paul alerted me to the DPH Web site announcement in two comments... one that was in the salmonella thread downstream, and one that was mistakenly attached to the News Cut Quiz post. In deleting the misposted one, I accidentally deleted the one in the salmonella thread. Having botched that, I then deleted the misposted one. So there's no record of Paul's fine work to keep us all informed.

Now there is.

Posted by Bob Collins | January 9, 2009 9:24 PM

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ITS NICE TO HAVE A COMMETED MAN LIKE HIM

Posted by CHRISANTUS | January 10, 2009 3:39 AM

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Maybe this would be an appropriate time to invest in our local, "greener," protein enriched spreads such as sunbutter (sunflower seeds) and soybutter (soybeans.) The more important issue is student safety in avoiding the ever increasing number of life threatening peanut allergies. Let us consider these sorts of peanut butter contaminations as an opportunity to look at our local farm economy.

Posted by laura | January 11, 2009 12:39 PM

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Had to laugh at the peanut allergy comment because of something else I just read:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-stein9-2009jan09,0,3149168.column

(which does not change my sympathy for all those old people and kids at school who thought they were having a nice, innocent, peanutbutter sandwich...)

Posted by Betsy | January 23, 2009 12:15 PM

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