Peanut Butter’s Sticking Around

It’s amazing what a few days can do to alter a point of view. My passing thought last week that “it’s just a matter of time before we have another flavor of the month” in regard to the current peanut butter fiasco might hold true, but any new food-safety Johnny come latelys will just add more weight to the frightening pendulum swinging directly into the gut of the food industry.

As the evidence comes to light, the apparently reckless absence of food-safety protocol by the Peanut Corporation of America is baffling. Allegedly, as noted by a piece in today’s Times, PCA sent out customer shipments before food-safety testing. Then it “stopped using a private laboratory because too many tests done there had showed contamination.” The plant manager’s reaction to the high incidence of coliforms on tests wasn’t, it seems, to immediately determine the source of contamination and prevent its spread lest the company’s products and reputation, its very business vitality, turn besmirched, but to find another lab to perform the testing. Both the president of the company and the manager of the Georgia plant pleaded the Fifth in court yesterday—likely on the urging from their nervous, doomed lawyers. Said Georgia plant and another owned by the company in Texas have closed their doors—likely to never open them again.

I’ve got a bad feeling that this continually escalating situation is far from over, and the industry will likely get a good, detailed look through a federal magnifying glass before the end comes. Now’s the time to get your ducks in a nice, straight row—particularly if you’ve had any dealing with PCA. The lawyers are lining up, sniffing for the money. This is getting ugly.

Of course, peanut butter will bounce back—it has just too many inherently shining points. But it’s going to need some help along the way...