Peanut Butter Salmonella Recall

I receive updates from the FDA about all the warnings and recalls that go through their system.  I get several of these per day, but mostly they're for minor concerns and for a very specific product made on a specific date and found only in a specific location, so I mostly ignore them unless it's a product that I know someone uses.  The FDA is constantly evaluating products for safety and doing its best to ensure the health of the citizens as well as it is able, given the immense population and the enormity of the food and drug industries.

So when I started receiving notices about a possible salmonella contamination in a certain type of peanut butter that was shipped to a certain, limited area, I noticed it, but filed the information away.  As the days went on, my inbox started to flood with more and more products that are being recalled.

Now please, nobody panic.  This is a fairly large-scale recall, but it is NOT a serious recall.  I have heard no word of deaths, but there has been an illness outbreak.  It's just that peanut butter and peanut paste is found in so many products that, once they started tracing back to the original source of the contamination, they found a whole bunch of products that MAY have used that contaminated source of peanut butter, like cookies and ice cream, and even a brand of dog treats that have peanut butter centers, however, peanut butter in a jar has not been affected.  The majority of the companies who have made products with the POSSIBLY contaminated peanut butter are all doing a VOLUNTARY recall of those products, just in case.  I think this shows just how very responsible our food industries and the FDA can be, even though it is still likely that the occasional contamination will slip through the cracks.

So, if you have any concerns at all, visit the FDA's website and they have a link for more information about the salmonella contamination right there on their home page.

http://www.fda.gov/