The maker of Peter Pan peanut butter agreed to plea guilty and pay $11.2 million to resolve a criminal case over shipping contaminated peanut butter that led to a nationwide outbreak of salmonella poisoning in 2007.
The fine, which must be approved by a judge, would be the largest ever paid in a food safety case, the Department of Justice said Wednesday.
The outbreak was discovered in February 2007 and started the year before. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eventually identified more than 700 cases of salmonella, and believed that thousands of additional related cases were not reported.
The agency said no deaths were linked to the salmonella poisoning.
ConAgra signed a plea agreement that it introduced the peanut butter contaminated with salmonella into interstate commerce between 2006 and 2007.
After the CDC and Food and Drug Administration announced in February 2007 that the outbreak could be traced to peanut butter made at the company’s Sylvester, Ga., plant, ConAgra voluntarily stopped production and recalled all peanut butter made there sine January 2004.
As part of the plea agreement, the company admitted it had been aware that its peanut butter could be contaminated and that some of the employees who did not detect salmonella when they analyzed tests of the finished products didn’t know how to interpret the test results.
ConAgra Foods said that it has made significant steps to improve the manufacturing plant and has enhanced safety protocols.
