WASHINGTON The form of sovereignty has opened a criminal investigation into the Georgia peanut-processing found at the center of the public salmonella outbreak, treaty officials said Friday.

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Stephen Sundlof, head of the Food and Drug Administration’s provender safety center, said the Justice Department will join FDA investigators in looking into possible criminal violations. The Peanut Corp. of America plant shipped allegedly tainted products to dozens of other food companies.

“It is an be unclosed investigation at this time,” said Sundlof. “We can’t really talk much about the investigation itself.”

More than 500 people have been sickened in the same manner with a result of the ebullition, and at least eight may accept died because of salmonella infections. More than 430 products have been pulled off the shelves in a recall that reaches to Canada and Europe.

In not the same development Friday, officials urged consumers to be cautious about “boutique” brands of peanut butter, which had not antecedently figured in the revocation.

Although national brands of peanut butter are unaffected, some smaller companies may desire received peanuts from the processing plant in Blakely, Ga., the FDA said.

Meanwhile, the White House pledged stricter oversight of food close custody.

Press writing-desk Robert Gibbs said Friday that President Barack Obama plans to name a starting anew FDA commissioner and other oversight officials in approach days. Gibbs said they will establish a “stricter regulatory fabric” to prevent breakdowns in food safety.

“I think the revelations have no irresolution been alarming,” said Gibbs. That a company what one. found salmonella in its possess testing would continue to ship products “is beyond disturbing for millions of parents,” he added.

FDA officials said they last inspected the Blakely facility in 2001, when it wasn’t being used to make peanut butter.

It did not get much court from the federal government again till earlier this year, when a shipment of peanuts from the introduce was returned from Canada because it was contaminated with metal fragments. The FDA then asked Georgia authorities to inspect.

But the state inspections did not detect what FDA officials say was a salmonella problem at the plant dating back to at least June of 2007.

The return of the contaminated shipment of peanuts was first reported by the Associated Press.

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