Poison Peanut Butter Perceptions

Ask the man or woman on the street what peanut-butter products they should be avoiding and the likely answer is “everything.” The latest recall for Salmonella-contaminated peanut-butter products is difficult enough for the food industry to follow without a concerted effort, let alone the average consumer.

Is the FDA at fault for poor communication, or is it just the nature of a microbial food-contamination problem?

My vote is for the latter: Only two weeks have passed since the initial public CDC announcement of a Salmonella outbreak on Jan. 8 (one would have to assume the investigation started before that). Two days later, King Nut Companies, a distributor of peanut butter manufactured for them by Peanut Corporation of America, announced a recall as soon as it was informed that Salmonella had been found in one of its products. The trail led to the manufacturer, Peanut Corporation of America, who then issued a voluntary recall Jan. 13. As a precaution, one of their customers, Kellogg Company, put a “precautionary hold” on products that might contain peanut-butter ingredients the following day, and the cascade of recalls of other consumer products has continued in the interval of the last week.

FDA announced on Jan. 17 that: “Because identification of products subject to recall is continuing, the FDA urges consumers to postpone eating commercially-prepared or manufactured peanut butter-containing products and institutionally-served peanut butter until further information becomes available about which products may be affected. Efforts to specifically identify those products are ongoing. At this time, there is no indication that any national name brand jars of peanut butter sold in retail stores are linked to the PCA recall.”  The agency issued the same general consumer advice on Jan. 18. Given the progression of the investigation and the potential effect on public safety, those announcements seem eminently appropriate.

In the same period, a number of companies not using ingredients from the suspect plant or selling consumer peanut butter (including ConAgra and Hershey, to name just two) have sent out releases basically saying, “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with our products,” to counter headlines such as The Wall Street Journal’s Jan. 20 warning “CDC: 453 Illnesses, 5 Deaths Tied To Peanut Butter.”

But let’s be honest; most consumers will see the headline and not investigate the details. I’d hazard a guess the first reaction will be to think of the 2007 Peter Pan peanut butter recall, mentally link the two and avoid all peanut butter. In fact, another WSJ story reports quotes a financial analyst as saying “There could be some perception issues on the part of consumers. That is why you are seeing other companies come out and say, ‘We are safe.’” It also mentioned Peter Pan manufacturer ConAgra “does not know yet if there is any impact on its sales or overall category sales as a result of the recalls by other companies.”

With the unlikelihood that most consumers are keeping Salmonella-recall scorecards, I’d think it’s probable. While companies can and should get the word out about the safety of their products, they’re likely to experience some fallout from yet another food-safety alarm. You know what they say about an ounce of prevention...even if it's not your fault.

  –Lynn A. Kuntz