Saying that "Fines won't do it," Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont today said that food producers responsible for widespread, deadly outbreaks of disease should face jail time. The Senator's comments came during a hearing before the Senate Agriculture Committee looking into the salmonella outbreak stemming from a Georgia peanut processing plant run by the Peanut Corporation of America, according to the Associated Press.

"To say that food safety in this country is a patchwork system is giving it too much credit. Food safety in America has become a hit or miss gamble, and that is truly frightening," said Chairman Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, waving a peanut butter sandwich. "It's time to find the gaps in the system and remedy them."

A second AP report today said that emergency meal kits shipped to victims of the recent snow and ice storms in Arkansas and Kentucky contained packets of the suspect peanut butter and had to be recalled. The meals were distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) to feed some of the 1.3 million people left without power. The recalls were ordered out of ''an abundance of caution,'' Jay Blanton, a spokesman for Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear told the A.P.

Another vulnerable population affected by the recall is food bank patrons, says a report by MSNBC. Although no illnesses have yet been attributed to products distributed by food banks, operators of banks across the country are having to closely monitor their food donations and toss those that end up on the recall list.

Meanwhile, that list is growing longer every day, expanding to well over 1,000 products made with PCA-provided peanut butter, according to the database being maintained by the Food & Drug Administration.