Beyond the 8 people killed, hundreds sickened and thousands of peanut products recalled, the salmonella peanut debacle has claimed another victim: consumer confidence in the safety of the U.S. food supply. Using data from the University of Minnesota’s Food Industry Center, the graph above shows the plunge in the percentage of survey respondents who said food is safer than it was a year ago. Those optimists now make up 22.5 percent of respondents, the lowest rating since the survey began in May 2008. A similar drop followed the jalapeno pepper-related salmonella outbreak last summer, but consumer confidence recovered in following months to between 40 and 45 percent - it has never crossed 50 percent, however. The results come from a weekly online survey of about 175 consumers, the university reports. The University of Minnesota is conducting thetracking project with the Louisiana State University AgCenter and it’s paid for by the National Center for Food Protection and Defense, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

In my experience, the public only gets glimpses the inner workings of the highly secretive nuclear power industry when something goes wrong. This week, we learned that pieces of radioactive rubbish are occasionally put on flatbed trucks and driven across the country. We also learned that, just as in boxes of cereal, contents can settle during shipping, although when that happened with a piece of radioactive rubbish from Xcel Energy’s Prairie Island plant, the company got a slap from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

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Five former mine executives for W.R. Grace & Co. went on trial this week for the asbestos contamination of Libby, Montana, one of the nation’s most notorious environmental disasters, the New York Times reports. The company’s mining of vermiculite wafted asbestos over the town, and at least 200 deaths and thousands of illnesses were blamed on the decades of contamination, the Times reports. Prosecutors allege that the company knew the dust enveloping the town was toxic, but denied it for years. Like 22 other states, Minnesota imported vermiculite from Libby and now has its own chapter of the debacle. This one is around the site of the former Western Mineral Products/W.R. Grace plant in northeast Minneapolis.

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My colleague Suzanne Ziegler reports that in a moment of unfortunate timing, Delta has rebooked peanuts for all Northwest flights, privileging Georgia pride over concerns of anaphylactic shock when it comes to snacks. It apparently goes without saying that the flight attendants won’t offer any peanuts from a certain plant in south Georgia, and a sister plant in Texas (complete with dead rodents). You don’t have to be allergic to get sick from those peanuts. The salmonella contamination linked to products from the Peanut Corporation of America has triggered possibly the more extensive food recall in U.S. history and raised concerns about the safety of the nation’s food supply.