VALPARAISO | Tainted Peter Pan peanut butter led to the salmonella poisoning and kidney failure of 11-year-old Krystina Brugh of Lowell, her family alleges in a lawsuit filed Thursday against ConAgra Foods in U.S. District Court in Hammond.
The suit claims the nation's food supply is at risk due to inadequate oversight and calls for overhaul of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.
The girl will undergo a kidney transplant Monday, receiving a new organ from her father, the family said at a morning news conference at the Valparaiso office of attorney Kenneth Allen.
The suit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
The family wants changes in the nation's "broken system" of food inspection that allow food manufacturers to be self-policing, Allen said.
The FDA cannot force plant shutdowns or force recalls and has no subpoena power, Allen said as he called for the agency's food safety functions to be dismantled and replaced by single agency responsible for food safety.
The February salmonella outbreak and recall of Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter manufactured at a ConAgra plant in Georgia, Allen said, resulted from inadequate inspection, questionable testing and unsanitary procedures.
Krystina, a cheerleader, gymnast and Girl Scout, was first diagnosed with stomach flu, Allen said. When salmonella poisoning was discovered, it "ravaged her kidneys" and led to months of kidney dialysis and the upcoming transplant.
The lawsuit was brought to protect other consumers and families, Allen said.
"We're not in this for a settlement," Allen said. "We're in this for some change."
Krystina's parents, John and Christina Brugh, said Krystina fell ill in late January after eating peanut butter, her favorite food, two weeks before the FDA announced a recall of the ConAgra product for suspected salmonella contamination.
Stephanie Childs, a spokesperson for ConAgra Foods, said she couldn't comment on the lawsuit, as the company had not seen it yet.
On Feb. 14, ConAgra initiated a voluntary recall of Peter Pan peanut butter based on information from the FDA drawn from a report of the Centers for Disease Control, Childs said.
"It is of deep concern to us that any consumer may have been harmed" by a ConAgra product, Childs said. The company is addressing each complaint of illness from tainted food as appropriate, she said.
