Pistachio Nutty Déjà Vu

On Tuesday of last week, Kraft and the Georgia Nut Company told the Food and Drug Administration that salmonella was found in some pistachio products and issued a voluntary recall. On Friday, Kroger issued a recall on a very specific product: Private Selection Shelled Pistachios sold in 10-ounce containers with a sell-by date of Dec. 13 or Dec. 14, 2009.

By Monday, the Food and Drug Administration had issued a warning: Don't eat any pistachios at all.

Here we go again. What started as a couple of isolated warnings about a foodborne illness has morphed into a potentially widespread problem, but nobody seems to know just how widespread. And, as usual, ass-covering seems to have trumped public safety.

All the nuts involved, it turns out, came from a plant in California owned by Setton Farms, the second-largest pistachio processor in the country. It supplies nuts wholesale to dozens of companies, including Kraft and Georgia Nut. But for at least a week, nobody even hinted at the possibility that more than a handful of products might be involved.

Kroger's recall (PDF), issued several days after Kraft's, noted that there had been no reported illnesses and simply cited salmonella as the cause. The grocery giant didn't give much else in the way of detail. (Relying on Kroger for details on recalled products might not be a good idea. The recall page on its Web site, bizarrely, includes the Stanley Stud Sensor 200, which is being recalled because it "may be contaminated with Salmonella and, if eaten, could result in severe illness to those individuals with a weakened immune system.")

Of course, companies want to be careful when issuing warnings or recalls. And they should avoid speculating on the cause of a given outbreak before all the facts are in. But Kroger in its recall notice made no mention of the other recent recall, nor did it give any hint at all that the problem might involve products other than its 10-ounce packages of Private Selection Pistachios with sell-by dates of Dec. 13 or Dec. 14, 2009.

When Kraft and Georgia Nut notified the FDA last week about the contamination, it reportedly identified Setton as the source. And yet until Tuesday, none of the affected companies or the FDA cited the potential for a more widespread problem.

Setton Farms has now recalled 1 million pounds of nuts from its plant in Tulare County, Calif. Inspectors are crawling all over the plant.

"The number of products that are going to be recalled over the coming days will grow, simply because these pistachio nuts have then been repackaged into consumer-level containers," said David Acheson, the FDA's assistant commissioner for food safety.