Peanut Butter Recall: What’s it all about???

For the past several weeks it seems like every day several products are recalled due to a peanut butter paste and peanut butter made by one plant in Georgia owned by Peanut Corporation of America due to risk of salmonella poisoning. It was originally thought by the FDA and others that since these products were manufactured in large containers for distribution to manufacturers of peanut based products and to large institutions, the most significant concern was cafeterias, nursing homes and schools which obtain this large vats of peanut butter for use in their facilities. Now we come to find that the use of these products are throughout the food chain in everything from health food bars, to peanut butter cracker, cookies and baked goods and most recently, animal products such as dog treats.
Speaking personally, I love peanut butter, but tend to use the either fresh ground peanut variety where you grind your own peanuts in a machine which many grocery stores now have, or the already jarred variety that is basically just pure ground peanuts with no additives. And both my dogs absolutely love dog treats with peanut butter. But ultimately this massive recall of products have included some of the health bars that I eat as meal replacements…now this is hitting me where it counts!!!
The story took an even more concerning turn today with the Washington Post reporting that the Peanut Corporation of America KNOWINGLY shipped out contaminated peanut butter 12 times in the past 2 years. The FDA has now indicated that the Peanut Corporation of America had performed internal tests 12 times in 2007 and 2008 which tested positive for salmonella, but sold the products anyway. This is outrageous. Moreover, there is no requirement that companies inform the FDA or any other governmental organization the results of their own internal testing. It appears the FDA, again understaffed, left inspecting of the plant to the Georgia Department of Agriculture. The Georgia Department of Agriculture as well claims it is understaffed and do not do as many inspections as it would like through the year. For an in depth discussion of the lack of inspections for plants manufacturing peanut based products, see this AP article appearing in yesterdays Chicago Tribune.

The FDA has an ongoing list of all the many products which have been recalled as a result of this problem. It ranges from cakes, to candy, ice cream and as mentioned above, pet food. If you have any questions or hesitation on whether to eat anything with peanuts as one of its ingredients, please review this list. And believe me, at this point it is almost changing hourly. My suggestion, don’t’ eat any products with any type of peanut additive or flavoring of any type. For my peanut fix, I am going to stick with grinding my own peanuts in the machine at the store. We need to wait some time for the extent of this recall to be defined.
If you or a family member have any questions about this recall or someone you know has gotten ill as a result of eating a peanut based product within the past couple months, please feel free to contact me. Until next time, be careful out there.