Peanut Corp.'s Suffolk plant showed problems in inspections

The Peanut Corporation of America plant in Suffolk has had some of the same food safety problems found in the company’s Georgia plant, according to inspection records in Virginia.

The company has closed its peanut processing plants in Georgia and Texas because of the current salmonella outbreak that has been traced to it.

Peanut Corp. operates a blanching operation in Suffolk. Blanching is a process that removes a peanut’s skin.

Although the company has not stated that the Suffolk plant is still running, it has not announced closure, either. An employee answered the phone at the Suffolk plant Wednesday but said no one at the plant was authorized to give information.

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services inspects food production facilities like Peanut Corp.’s Tidewater Blanching Company operation in Suffolk.

The News & Advance obtained five reports of inspections at Peanut Corp.’s Suffolk plant, covering the past three years.

Three of those reports, including two last year, stated that there were gaps in entryways to the plant’s facilities that could allow rodents or other pests to get in. One investigator saw mouse droppings in one warehouse and a bird flitting around in another.

Peanut Corp. officials at the plant and a media relations firm did not return phone calls or an e-mail asking whether those problems have been corrected.

An older inspection by an independent food safety firm had given the plant high ratings.

The inspections of the Suffolk plant listed the following conditions in March 2006:

- two doors with gaps at the bottom large enough to allow rodent entry, and one doorway with torn or missing flaps from a strip curtain;

- accumulations of flaking tape, paint or other materials in three areas of the plant.

In January 2007:

- two locations with flaking paint or tape;

- peanuts spilling from a torn bin into the floor;

- a flaking substance “appearing to be fine peanut material” floating down into a hopper, possibly from a vent in the roof.

In May 2008:

- a live bird was walking and flying in one warehouse, and the inspector counted 43 mouse droppings on the floor of another;

- a 41-inch gap was found in a set of strip curtains in the doorway to one warehouse;

- two totes of blanched peanuts had tipped from their pallets, and holes in them allowed the peanuts to touch the floor.

In October 2008:

- dead mice were in two traps set in the warehouse where mouse droppings had been seen in the previous inspection;

- a 32-inch gap was found in the strip curtains covering the door to that warehouse;

- mold was on the outside surface of three totes containing peanuts, and on some of the peanuts at the top of the containers. Those peanuts were not going to be processed for human consumption, a plant employee told the inspector.

In December 2004 the Suffolk plant was inspected by AIB International, a firm that provides food safety audits and related services. According to a draft audit report that Peanut Corp. once posted to its Web site, the facility received a “Superior” ranking of 980.