Earlier this year, a nationwide salmonella outbreak virtually shut down the peanut industry, while plants rid themselves of contaminated peanut butter paste.

The outbreak was one of the biggest topics of conversation at the 5th Annual Commissioner's Food Safety Forum Tuesday at the State Fairgrounds.

"In the end, over 3,000 products were actually recalled that had some form of that product in it," said Joe Reardon, director of the North Carolina's Food & Drug Protection Division. "So it was a massive recall."

That outbreak killed at least nine people around the country, and prompted the industry to take a closer look at how it does business.

Here in North Carolina, it had a direct impact on business, after the Austin Foods plant in Cary ended up with some of the contaminated peanut butter paste.

"Once you get salmonella in -- to the trucks, and then the storage facility and into the pipes -- you've got a major problem," said Dr. Ken Falci with Kellogg's, which owns the Austin product line.

Crews spent months cleaning the entire facility before it finally reopened in April.

"It sticks very well, and you have to really scrape these lines to get that out," said Falci. "And then you have to think about the residual peanut butter that's in those lines and those tanks and how do you kill the salmonella that's in the lines."

Experts say salmonella is particularly hard to deal with for two main reasons: it takes minute amounts of salmonella to get somebody sick, and it's tough to get rid of.

"Salmonella is an organism that is particularly hearty," said Dr. Don Zink, a Senior Science Advisor for the FDA. "Once it gets into a low-moisture food it's very hard to kill."

Zink says the entire peanut industry grew complacent after decades of business with no problems, but now everyone in the business has to reconsider what they do.

"It's not enough to do what you do right. You have to make sure that the companies that supply you with ingredients are doing what they're supposed to do," said Zink.

Reardon agrees, saying, "It's a much more complicated process today than ever before."

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