The company at the center of the salmonella
outbreak that sickened more than 1,820 people during the summer and led
to the recall of 550 million eggs has been cleared by the Food and Drug
Administration to begin selling eggs for the table again.
On Tuesday the FDA notified Wright County Egg LLC
of Galt, Iowa, that it could begin shipping shell eggs from two of its
73 henhouses. The company has six egg farms in and around Galt,
spokeswoman Hinda Mitchell says.
Since August, the company has been under orders
from the FDA to sell only to "breaker" facilities, where eggs are broken
and processed to eliminate potential pathogens.
"During the outbreak, I said that FDA would not
agree to the sale of eggs to consumers from Wright County Egg until we
had confidence that they could be shipped and consumed safely," FDA
Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said in a statement. "After four months of
intensive work by the company and oversight, testing and inspections by
FDA, I am satisfied that time has come."
In a letter to Austin DeCoster, the owner of
Quality Egg LLC, which also does business as Wright County Egg, the FDA
outlined the steps that the company has taken to clean up its henhouses,
including testing for salmonella enteritidis and clearing up its rodent
problem.
In a statement, DeCoster said: "We recognize that
we will have to continue to do more than is expected of us as we resume
operations ... both to ensure our ongoing compliance with FDA
regulations and to re-establish successful relationships with our
customers."
The FDA has conducted multiple on-site
inspections, the most recent in October and November. Eggs from the two
laying houses now cleared to sell shell eggs have tested negative for
salmonella enteritidis, twice by the FDA and once by Wright County Egg.
The company has agreed to test the houses every month.
When the company was in full production before
the first recall Aug. 13, it sold 3 million dozen eggs a week to the
table egg market, Mitchell says. "Now we're going to be at about 71,000
dozen going to the table egg market."
