Peanut Butter News

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NEW ORLEANS – Stark differences exist between the oil platform fire in the Gulf of Mexico and the blast that led to the massive BP spill. Mostly notably, no one was killed and no crude was gushing into the water, but the distinctions don’t end there.

Even though the Mariner Energy-owned platform that erupted in flames Thursday was just 200 miles west of the site of the spill, everything from the structures to the operations to the safety devices were different.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Johnson and Johnson unit DePuy Orthopaedics, already in hot water with government regulators, issued a global recall Thursday of two hip aid systems after finding that more people than expected suffered pain which required additional surgery.

DePuy, which has sold about 93,000 units of its ASR XL Acetabular System and the ASR Hip Resurfacing System, said recent data received by the company showed an increase in the number of people who have had a second hip replacement surgery, also called a “revision surgery.”

Full Story at msnbc.com

Eggs from the two Iowa farms at the heart of a salmonella scare could still make it into your shopping basket — but not in the way you’d think.

The producers responsible for a recall of some 550 million potentially tainted eggs have found another outlet for the inventory that just keeps coming: They’ll turn them into liquid eggs used in everything from cookies and cakes to egg substitutes and pet food.

Patricia El-Hinnawy, a spokeswoman for the federal Food and Drug Administration, confirmed Wednesday that Wright County Eggs and Hillandale Farms will send ongoing supplies of eggs from laying hens to so-called “breaking plants” to be processed and sold.

Full Story at CNN.com

(CNN) — The number of eggs recalled in a nationwide salmonella scare has grown to more than half a billion.

Iowa egg producer Hillandale Farms of Iowa is voluntarily recalling some 170.4 million eggs distributed to stores and companies that service, or are located in, 14 states, a spokeswoman at the Egg Safety Center said on Friday.

The Hillandale eggs were distributed under the Hillandale Farms, Sunny Farms, and Sunny Meadow brand names in six-egg cartons, dozen-egg cartons, 18-egg cartons, 30-egg packages, and five-dozen-egg cases, the website for the Egg Safety Center said.

Full Story at msnbc.msn.com

Hundreds of people have been sickened in a salmonella outbreak linked to eggs in four states and possibly more, health officials said Wednesday as a company dramatically expanded a recall to 380 million eggs.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working with state health departments to investigate the illnesses. No deaths have been reported, said Dr. Christopher Braden, a CDC epidemiologist involved in the investigation.

Initially, 228 million eggs, or the equivalent of 19 million dozen-egg cartons, were recalled by the company Wright County Egg of Galt, Iowa. But that number was increased to nearly 32 million dozen-egg cartons.

Full Story at msnbc.com

MIAMI — Two new scientific reports Tuesday raised fresh fears about the environmental fallout from the world’s worst offshore oil spill and questioned government assurances that most of the oil from the ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico was already gone.

In one of the reports, researchers at the University of Georgia said about three-quarters of the oil from BP’s blown-out Macondo well was still lurking below the surface of the Gulf and may pose a threat to the ecosystem.

Charles Hopkinson, who helped lead the investigation, said up to 79 percent of the 4.1 million barrels of oil that gushed from the broken well and was not captured directly at the wellhead remained in the Gulf.

Full Story at msnbc.com

The company that owned the oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April had widespread safety concerns about several of its other rigs in the gulf, and a month before the disaster it commissioned a broad review of the safety culture of the company’s North American operations, according to confidential internal reports.

In response to “a series of serious accidents and near-hits within the global organization,” Transocean, the world’s largest offshore drilling company, commissioned the risk management company Lloyd’s Register to investigate its Houston headquarters and three other gulf rigs besides the Deepwater Horizon to assess its safety culture.

Full Story at msnbc.com

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO — BP said Wednesday that it had reached the “desired outcome” in a procedure in which it pumped mud down the throat of the blown-out well that is leaking in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP spokeswoman Sheila Williams said the mud is holding the oil down. She called the initial results “a very big deal.”

However, it doesn’t mean the well has been ultimately killed. The company will decide its next steps during the day Wednesday, Williams added.

Full Story at msnbc.com

DOVER, N.H. — In 1632, John Tuttle arrived from England to a settlement near the Maine-New Hampshire border, using a small land grant from King Charles I to start a farm.

Eleven generations and 378 years later, his field-weary descendants — arthritic from picking fruits and vegetables and battered by competition from supermarkets and pick-it-yourself farms — are selling their spread, which is among the oldest continuously operated family farms in America.

Full Story at msnbc.com

NEW ORLEANS — Ships were getting back in place Sunday at the Gulf of Mexico site of BP’s leaky oil well as crews restarted work on plugging the gusher before another big storm stops work again.

Piping for the main relief well being drilled was being reinstalled and should be ready by late afternoon, National Incident Commander Thad Allen told reporters Sunday.

Full Story at news.CNET.com

Everything from high-tech imaging gear to plastic bags with screens is being tested by a “skunk works” team at BP set up to evaluate cleanup methods in the Gulf of Mexico.

The oil company’s High Interest Technology Team, based in Mobile, Ala., is currently sifting through thousand of proposals to fix the leak or reduce damage to the environment. BP recently began testing some new products, including a machine that removes oil from sand and an oil-water separator made from hardware store components, including plastic bags, mesh from lawn furniture, and plastic pipes.

Full Story at CNN.com

(CNN) — The Utah Department of Workforce Services has moved to fire two employees believed to have created and distributed a list containing personal information of 1,300 purported illegal immigrants, officials said Tuesday.

The agency terminated a temporary worker and issued an “intent to terminate employment” notice to the other, spokesman Dave Lewis said. The latter career employee is on paid administrative leave pending a hearing, he said.

Information from a completed internal review of the data leak will be given to the state’s attorney general Wednesday for possible legal action, the department said.