Nearly 300 people in 39 states have fallen ill since August, and federal health investigators said they strongly suspect Peter Pan peanut butter and certain batches of Wal-Mart's Great Value house brand, both manufactured by ConAgra Foods Inc.

Shoppers across the country were warned to throw out jars with a product code on the lid beginning with "2111," which denotes the plant where it was made.

How the dangerous germ got into the peanut butter was a mystery. But because peanuts are usually heated to high, germ-killing temperatures during the manufacturing process, government and industry officials said the contamination may have been caused by dirty jars or equipment.

ConAgra said it is not clear how many jars are affected by the recall. But the plant is the sole producer of the nationally distributed Peter Pan brand, and the recall covers all peanut butter smooth and chunky alike produced by the plant from May 2006 until now.

FDA inspectors visited the now shut-down plant Wednesday and Thursday to try to pinpoint where the contamination could have happened. The FDA last inspected the plant in 2005. Testing was also being done on at least some the salmonella victims' peanut butter jars, but investigators said some may have already been discarded.

The highest number of cases were reported in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Tennessee and Missouri. About 20 percent of all the ill were hospitalized, and there were no deaths.  About 85 percent of the infected people said they ate peanut butter, and about a quarter of them ate it at least once a day, the CDC's Lynch said. It was the only food that most of the patients had all recently eaten.

Salmonella sickens about 40,000 people a year in the U.S. and kills about 600. It can cause diarrhea, fever, dehydration, abdominal pain and vomiting.

Salmonella commonly originates in the feces of birds and animals, and could be introduced at a multitude of stages in the peanut butter-making process. But many safeguards are in place.

While rodents and birds commonly get into peanut storage bins,   germs are killed when raw peanuts are roasted. When making peanut butter, the nuts are again heated above the salmonella-killing temperature of 165 degrees as they are ground into a paste and mixed with other ingredients before being squirted into jars and quickly sealed.

"The heating process is sufficient to kill salmonella, should it be present," said Mike Doyle, director of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety, in the state that produces nearly half of the nation's peanuts.

Other states reporting cases are Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia.

Full article here:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070216/ap_on_re_us/peanut_butter_salmonella_21