Urgent Peanut Product Recall

[Bob_VT]

Hey you food junkies, parents and others...... this peanut product stuff is serious.

Look at the link and read what has been recalled.

http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/peanutbutterrecall/index.cfm#All

Here are the topic headings of types of products:
Brownie Product Recalls
Cake and Pie Product Recalls
Candy Product Recalls
Cookie Product Recalls
Cracker Product Recalls
Donut Product Recalls
Dressing and Seasoning Product Recalls
Fruit and Vegetable Product Recalls
Ice Cream Product Recalls
Peanut Butter Product Recalls
Peanut Paste Product Recalls
Peanuts Product Recalls
Pet Food Product Recalls
Pre-Packaged Meals Product Recalls
Snack Bar Product Recalls
Snack and Snack Mix Product Recalls
Topping Product Recalls


Go to the list for specifics.

[SailDesign]

Holy Sh!t. Atsa lotta stuff!
Forwarded to all my kids. Thanks.

[MadMax]

Yeah, we've already had to return some PB Clif kid Z-Bars...

Cheers! M2

[tk-421]

Something on topic that I'd like to share:
FDA: Peanut plant knew product was tainted with salmonella (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/02/06/peanut.butter/index.html)

[Bob_VT]

Something on topic that I'd like to share:
FDA: Peanut plant knew product was tainted with salmonella (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/02/06/peanut.butter/index.html)

At this point I think everyone should react on the solution and removing the possibly tainted products........ We can nuke the plant off the map at any later date.

One of those salmonella deaths was very close to me (w/in 60 miles).

[GeneW]

Something on topic that I'd like to share:
FDA: Peanut plant knew product was tainted with salmonella (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/02/06/peanut.butter/index.html)

""In some situations the firm received a positive salmonella test result, followed by a later negative result, and then shipped the products," said the FDA report, which was included in an e-mail to CNN. "In some other situations, the firm shipped the products [which had already tested positive] before it had received the [second] positive test results."

It's not so much that the supplier "knew" that the product was contaminated but that they did not aggressively recall known bad batches. I can understand the "two strikes and your out", as every sort of assay has known false positives.

The peanut market this year is really crummy. A lot of overproduction this year and stored peanuts from last year have made the market competitive. Some folks seem to forget that one can be too lax in the pursuit of production numbers.

As someone who works in Manufacturing I can say that this is one of our nightmares. You do the best you can do because your reputation and customer relations are what keep you in business. Jerk off your customers by sending them crummy ware, which gets them into dutch with their customers and it's a matter of time before you aren't in business.

Where I work we know pretty damn quick if something is defective or not, it's my job (and that of colleagues) to beat the machines to see if they break. If they don't fail and meet spec they go. If they do fail someone has to fix it (rework) and then we beat them some more.

This is a whole different animal. Peanuts are raised in the Earth and harvested by machines. Salmonella can come from many sources.

Con-Agra's 2007 salmonella outbreak was caused by a leaky roof and faulty sprinkler system. This isn't surprising - most factory roofs leak. In fact I've never ever worked in a factory that did not have leak issues. Well. one, but they were a Fortune 50 Corp site which was mainly R&D but had a vest pocket production facility for a very very specialized product on site.

Too damn bad that Con Agra did not have in place a quality control program that mandated keeping track of leaks and remediating them.

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20070406/peanut-butter-salmonella-source-found

Turns out that there are pretty sophisticated tests for salmonella, some of them are lab grade that use antigens and stuff, and can be run in the field. I don't know the costs, but to me it would be cheap insurance.

http://www2.dupont.com/Qualicon/en_US/news_events/article20090113.html

There is also the numbers game. Manufacturing demands so much ware per unit of time. People's careers live and die by those numbers.

Unfortunately some folks don't get it - you cannot dick with the public.

"A Georgia peanut butter plant at the center of a probe of the nationwide outbreak has laid off most of its roughly 50 workers. Production is shut down at the Peanut Corp. of America plant in Blakely, which made peanut butter and peanut paste blamed for sickening at least 486 people in more than 40 states since the fall. Six have died."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28749159/

On a more personal note - since I cannot consume dairy I have to use substitutes. Peanuts and I "get along". So it is with some regret that I see products slowly vanishing off of store shelves.

Gene