It’s happening again. A single salmonella-contaminated food item is forcing recalls of scores of other products throughout the country.

We went though this last year with contaminated peanuts from the Georgia and Texas plants of Peanut Corporation of America.

PCA recalled the tainted goobers, but the ripple effect spread for weeks as hundreds of manufacturers pulled thousands of products made with the pathogen-containing nuts off store shelves throughout North American.

It’s not peanuts this time, but rather a flavoring agent called hydrolyzed vegetable protein. As unappetizing as the name sounds, it is used as a flavoring agent in thousands of gravies, sauces, soups, salad dressings and snacks.

The source of the tainted concoction is Basic Food Flavors, Inc., an international supplier of flavor and seasoning agents.   The FDA conducted an investigation of the company’s Las Vegas, Nev., production plant after a customer who purchased the flavoring had it analyzed and found it contained Salmonella.

As the FDA did with the peanuts and does with many other recalled foods, the agency has to wait until the downstream producers of these consumer products realize that the food they’re selling may also be contaminated.

The federal food detectives say they don’t have enough investigators or a structure that permits them to identify and chase all the ingredients in the processed food that’s manufactured and sold in this country.

For more details on this recall see the story I wrote on AOLnews.com.