Makes you wonder about our wonderful Food and Drug Administration when we are having the biggest re-call on foods in America's history. Over 400 different cakes cookies and other peanut related foods are being re-called because of salmonella. The Georgia peanut butter processing facility Peanut Corp. is a filthy plant of mold, roaches, and many other sanitary problems.

The FDA is re-calling products that were made clear back to 2007 I guess it is to bad for the people that were sickened or might have died because of the tainted products and not really known that the peanut butter was the cause of their sickness or even deaths. This corporation should be held accountable and fined; they should also have to pay wages to their workers while they are cleaning up the facility.

After the facility is cleaned up and allowed to process again, the FDA should put them on parole; they have carried out knowingly, or in betters terms pre meditated criminal acts against other members of society, the FDA should go in the facility every week to make sure that this does not happen again. Unfortunately this is not the protocol of the FDA but this is.

There is no federal law that order's the number of inspections that must be carried out each year at peanut processing facilities. The Food and Drug Administration contracts with individual states to perform the inspections, the FDA permits the states a wide-ranging judgment call when it comes to how they carry out inspections. The agency asks the states to base the frequency and nature of inspections on how risky a food is considered, giving priority to high-risk foods.

The states, in turn, rely on the companies to police themselves between infrequent visits from state inspectors. Boy, that sure is an intelligent decision when we all know that corporations will do anything it takes to keep production going and money coming back even if it is detrimental to the pubic or the environment. A number of leading peanut butter companies won't specify what they do to keep their products from being contaminated. Now I am no professional, but wouldn't you think if companies wont specify how they keep their products clean, raise a red flag to somewhat intelligent individuals? Wouldn't that alert the FDA or inspectors? If I were running the FDA and companies pulled that secretive crap on me I would immediately send in a team of inspectors and root out the violations and when found, fine them a huge amount to detour that sort of nonsense again. This is nothing more than corporate America taking advantage of the public and getting away with it. A Federal agency such as the FDA not doing its job correctly, this is a clear example of government bureaucracy in action.

Jif maker J.M. Smucker Co., Skippy manufacturer Unilever, and ConAgra Foods which makes Peter Pan, all have said they have stringent food safety and quality control standards. But neither Unilever nor ConAgra will answer questions about how often the plants test their finished product for food borne illnesses or other possible contaminations. Smucker's said it couldn't answer those questions for proprietary reasons. None of these manufacturers are involved in the current salmonella outbreak. But there is that red flag being raised, why won't they answer these very simple and important questions? These company's facilities should be investigated because they have had problems in the past as recently as 2007. Peter Pan and Great Value Peanut butter had a salmonella outbreak, ConAgra owned the plant in Georgia, the facility blamed the outbreak on a leaky roof where water got into the jars and a leaky sprinkler system, which allowed the bacteria to grow and contaminate the peanut butter.

There has been tampered test results from some companies, they kept testing until they got a passable result, in the mean while they kept shipping out contaminate foods. The companies involved in this outrage have now put out a press release that they are complying with the FDA requirements, big deal; they only did so after they got caught.

Our news media makes a big deal about contaminated foods from China, how Chinese CEO's knew what was going on. I don't think America has room to talk about food contamination, or lying CEO's. Maybe America should take the same steps that the Chinese government has; they have given the death penalty or life in prison to those individuals who deliberately contaminated foods that resulted in deaths of their fellow citizens.