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Suspect US peanut butter not sold in Taiwan: DOH

"There's no record of either brand being imported into Taiwan."

Cheng Hui-wen, director of the DOH's Bureau of Food Sanitation

Taiwan has not imported two brands of peanut butter linked to a recent salmonella outbreak in the US, a Department of Health (DOH) official said yesterday.

A salmonella outbreak that has totalled nearly 300 cases in 37 US states since last August has been linked to tainted jars of Peter Pan or Great Value peanut butter -- both brands produced by the same ConAgra Foods company.

"We've checked computer records at the Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection for imported lots of peanut butter as far as one year back," said Cheng Hui-wen (鄭慧文), director of the DOH's Bureau of Food Sanitation. "There's no record of either brand being imported into Taiwan."

"There is a chance that the product might have been brought into the country by individuals," she added, "but the quantity would be small and unlikely to cause a widespread outbreak here."

ConAgra Foods has reportedly begun to recall all Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter produced after May last year, said Cheng.

"Salmonella bacteria is all around us," added Shih Wen-yi (施文儀), deputy director-general of the Center for Disease Control (CDC), "but some strains are more virulent than others."

Taiwan is a part of the PulseNet system that tracks food-borne diseases to their source in order to better control outbreaks, Shih said.

He added that the CDC had launched an investigation into all imported food products and had found no suspicious cases of salmonella contamination.
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