The government has decided to ask for harsher conditions to be followed by the companies which produce peanut butter. After two companies lead by the Peanut Corporation of America got closed because of the salmonella outbreak they had provoked, the government is now considering changing the food safety standards of peanut butter and of other foods too.

Health officials told the Congress that the entire situation created by the peanut butter processing plants in Georgia and Texas has lead the government to be harsher with the companies producing and delivering foods.

Dr. Stephen Sundlof of the Food and Drug Administration told lawmakers on Wednesday that their agency inspectors will now collect samples of every facility they go to. Until the salmonella outbreak this year, this operation was done only if the officials would suspect a problem.

Sundlof, head of the FDA's food safety center, told the House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee that the whole changing they are going through right now is strictly connected to the outbreak.

Nearly 1,900 products containing peanut butter or simple peanuts produced by the processing plants in Georgia and Texas were recalled off the market after 600 people got sickened and other nine had died. Sundlof also said that the government is now thinking about designating the peanut butter as a high-risk food.

If this future decision turns into facts, the peanut butter producers would have to stick to food safety plans as to prevent contamination. For example, the producers of juice and seafood already have to follow such hard conditions.