How did federal and state health officials link the salmonellosis outbreak to peanut butter and peanut paste?
Many, but not all, of the people who became sick reported that they had eaten peanut butter in the week prior to becoming ill in institutional settings, such as nursing homes. Some of the other people who became ill reported eating a food that contained peanut butter or peanut paste. Having this information, Minnesota state officials tested an open five-pound container of King Nut peanut butter from a nursing home where three patients were affected by the outbreak strain of Salmonella Typhimurium and found the peanut butter to contain the same strain of Salmonella Typhimurium that was associated with the illnesses. Because it is always possible that an open container was contaminated by someone or something else in the environment, the FDA and the States began testing unopened containers of the same brand of peanut butter. On January 19, testing by the Connecticut Department of Health on an unopened container of King Nut peanut butter showed that it too contained the same strain of Sal
