Posted: January 12th, 2009 - 8:50pm by Ben Chapman

As Doug posted earlier, it looks as though peanut butter has been implicated in the current 400+ person outbreak of Salmonella Typhimurium.  Earlier tonight AP cited CDC sources as saying that the Salmonella also may have contributed to three deaths. AP reports that it looks like Minnesota Dept of Health has yet again cracked the case and recovered the outbreak strain from an opened jar of King Nut brand peanut butter, and has epidemiolgy to back it up:

"The commonality among all of our patients was that they ate peanut butter," said Doug Schultz, a spokesman with the Minnesota Department of Health. While the brand of peanut butter couldn't be confirmed in every case, the majority of patients consumed the same brand, he said Monday.

Here's a food safety infosheet that focuses on the outbreak. You can download it here.