(Mobile, Ala.) February 5th—After watching the peanut butter recall list grow and grow, the folks at the Bay Area Food Banks found themselves in a jam. The food police started showing up at their front door. “We've had the health department, the State Department of Agriculture, The FDA and local health inspectors,” said David Reaney, Director of the Bay Area Food Banks. Essentially we’ve had inspectors from three separate operations essentially asking the same questions. “But, it’s just a reflection of how the U.S. is taking this recall,” said Reaney.
You could say its serious business following a serious illness. A salmonella outbreak that's left 8 dead and hundreds more sickened by tainted peanut butter the FDA now suspects was produced at a processing plant in Georgia.
While the national investigation continues, here at home, local inspectors are scouring area grocery store shelves and food banks making certain items "tagged" as dangerous are removed from their shelves. “We automatically have a policy of making certain we check and double check any food product that’s apart of a recall,” said Reaney. So far we’ve had about 4 or 5 thousand pounds of food items, huge pellets of items we’ve destroyed out of caution.
NBC15 News has also discovered when it comes to peeling through a warehouse size pantry for items considered bad, the devil is in the details. So far, volunteers with the food bank are spending an extra 30 hours a week, sifting, sorting and putting food items included in the recall off to the side. They’re left in a pile and checked again by food bank administrators, but even then they can’t be too sure.
Reaney says in addition to making certain those items are pulled off the shelves, they’re also spending countless hours contacting the smaller food pantries they service. “We wanted to make certain no unsuspecting client is harmed by any of this,” said Reaney. We’ve had to notify about 45 different church pantries that you got part of the shipment and here are the things to look for and destroy.
Don't forget you can check out a complete list of the items in the peanut recall by visiting our web-channel nbc15 online-dot com.
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