One of the main causes of the salmonella outbreak which lead to eight deaths across the United States was poor oversight by food safety regulators and a slow response by federal agencies. This is a fact acknowledged by health officials and experts and rebuked by the Senate.

At least 575 people in 43 U.S. states and one in Canada fell ill due to the salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter-containing products. Thousands of products were withdrawn from the market since mid-January when the whole thing started, but the FDA acted too late to prevent the problem from getting bigger.

The late intervention in the nation’s peanut-borne salmonella outbreak was rebuked by Senate members, who accused health officials and regulators of cooperating to find ways of splitting the responsibility among different agencies.

"All of this happened because of a failure - the failure of our government to prevent unsafe food from entering the food chain," Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) told FDA officials.

Some members, such as Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) suggested that it might be more effective if people would be sent to jail for something like this.

"You give them a fine, well, it's just the cost of doing business. But if somebody thinks they're going to go to jail . . . that's an entirely different thing," said Sen. Leahy.

The investigation is currently focusing on a Georgia plant operated by Peanut Corp. of America. The plant was the main source of the salmonella outbreak. Senate members focused their discussion on the poor regulation of the plant in Blakely, Ga.