The FDA and the CDC are urging consumers to avoid eating any products containing peanut butter or peanut butter paste, like cookies, cereal, candy, and ice cream until the agency determines whether those products are linked to the salmonella outbreak that may have caused the deaths of six people.

 

“We urge consumers to postpone eating those products including peanut butter until further information becomes available,” Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said in a statement.

 

At least 474 people in 43 states have been sickened by the outbreak strain of Salmonella typhimurium. The strain that has affected these people, called Salmonella typhimurium, usually has its source in poultry, cheese and eggs, the CDC stated. The first case was reported September 3, but most cases occurred between October and the end of December.

 

U.S. health officials have announced that more than 450 people had become sick from the food-borne illness and five may have died because of salmonella.

Kellogg Co., the largest U.S. cereal maker, has recalled as a precaution, about 33,000 cases of cookies and 7 million cases of crackers from grocery shelves. The company advised grocers and customers to destroy the products.

 

The FDA is urging companies that make these products to check whether they use peanut butter or paste produced by the company. Officials said a previous outbreak of salmonella linked to contaminated peanut butter showed that the bacteria are not necessarily killed if these products are heat-treated or backed.

Annually, about 40,000 people are reported sickened from Salmonella in the United States, still many more cases remain unreported, according to the CDC.