• Expiration Date P10238a6 Austin Crackers 2017

Bill Rector of Blaine, Wash., didn’t know about a nationwide recall of peanut butter products until he and his 3-year-old daughter already had been hospitalized with salmonella poisoning. “That's the first we heard of it,” he said. But that was back in January, when the 32-year-old meat cutter said he and his toddler were sickened by Austin Quality Foods crackers linked to a still-widening food poisoning outbreak. Since then, word has spread, he said.

Expiration Date P10238a6 Austin Crackers 2017

Or so you’d think. Nearly two months after the initial recalls, and despite massive publicity about the salmonella scare linked to faulty practices at a Georgia peanut processing plant, federal health officials are worried that some consumers still haven’t gotten the message. Half of new cases tied to crackers About half of the new cases of confirmed salmonella infection continue to show up in people who ate Austin or Keebler peanut butter crackers manufactured by the Kellogg Co., according to officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That includes illnesses that began as recently as Feb. 13, long after retailers and health officials thought they’d issued adequate warnings. The Rector family of Blaine, Wash., accumulated $30,000 in hospital and doctor bills in January, after Bill Rector, 32, and his youngest daughter, Payton, 3, contracted salmonella poisoning, allegedly after eating tainted peanut butter crackers.