At least one employee alerted management to the sanitation problems at a Georgia peanut plant linked to the deadly salmonella outbreak, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. “I used to tell them all of the time, ‘We need to shut down and really clean this place,’” said Anne Bristow, a sanitation worker at Peanut Corp of America. “I did see roaches and rodents.”
The company's own tests found salmonella a dozen times in the last 2 years, but it wasn't required to notify the feds. That's a "gaping loophole," Sen. Tom Harkin complained yesterday. Georgia's Saxby Chambliss, meanwhile, criticized the CDC for taking too long to identify the problem and notify states. “Y’all have got to figure out some way to speed up this process,” he said.
(More salmonella stories.)