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Gratuitous dog-blogging: Home peanut butter contamination edition
By Gina Spadafori
January 31, 2009
As I hope everyone knows, the massive recall of peanut-butter products is all about the products from the Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely, Ga., which is to peanut-butter snacks what Menu Foods was to pet foods — a producer with tentacles that reach deep into a dangerously centralized food system. (The FDA list of recalled products, which continues to grow by the day, is here. And they even have a recall widget now!)
Jarred peanut butter is not part of the recall because it’s produced elsewhere (many different elsewheres, depending on the brand), which is a good thing because I love peanut butter.
Of course, so do dogs. Which is why yesterday I had to convert an almost full far of PB to Kong stuffing after McKenzie boosted it off the counter and started in on a contamination project of her own.
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haha - I think she intended it for McKenzie Stuffing - not some dumb Kong!
Comment by slt — January 31, 2009 @ 9:32 am
I am also SO glad that they are not recalling jar peanut butter. I have been craving it so much since they’ve been talking about it so much on the news that I’ve gone through half a jar of Skippy in the past week all by myself.
When they recalled Peter Pan a few years ago, I had just opened a jar with one of the bad serial numbers, literally a day before I heard the announcement on the news. I had eaten some on toast and had no ill effects but I had also given a piece of it to my last hairless rat, and she had mysteriously died that night. Everybody said it was just a coincidence as she had no symptoms of salmonella, but it was still pretty strange. And sad; she was a really cool rat.
Needless to say, I tossed the jar of PB.
Comment by stellaluna — January 31, 2009 @ 11:45 am
Somebody tell me where the product number is if I don’t see it in the lid? The FDA website is a mess and I can’t get any information.
Comment by Donna — March 1, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
If it’s jarred PB, you don’t probably don’t have to worry. Most of the contaminated products have peanut ingredients.
Search the FDA here:
http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/h.....atyph.html
If your product is on the list, don’t worry about codes. Just take it back for a refund.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 1, 2009 @ 2:49 pm
Oh those nasty pigeons on the roof of the plant that was pointed out to PCA 7 years ago. Oh wait, 7 years ago we were held captive by Dubyah. No wonder repairs to the roof of the Blakely Plant weren’t made or the pigeons removed.
You can easily if messily make your own peanut butter. Just Goggles PeanutButterLovers. com.
Comment by Anne T — March 1, 2009 @ 5:40 pm
Ps: You can even use Teh Googles to find homemade marshmallow recipes. Surprise. Alas, I couldn’t find any that included the original Marsh Mallow Althaea officinalis whose root was the primary ingredient.
And every basic cook book has jam recipes, so there you go. Do it yourself. Get control over what ingredients you use and screw the Industry! Why do we Americans affect such helplessness when it comes to food and expect others to do it for us when with a little forethought, we can bypass ‘them’ and do it ourselves?
Comment by Anne T — March 1, 2009 @ 5:49 pm
Here y’go! (scroll down for recipe):
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/love2learn/
Comment by The OTHER Pat — March 1, 2009 @ 6:50 pm
Marsh Mallow (actually any mallow) is very easy to grow and you can get decent roots very quickly. Check out old herbals for recipes (some of the English ones are online), but if you make an extract/tea from the shredded roots and then use that in the modern recipes as the liquid, you should be just fine.
The apothecaries used marsh mallows as a sore throat remedy so you may find recipes there, also. Marsh Mallow is also good for urinary problems — don’t know if they are good for dogs so Christie would know better if she should be dosing Rebel with them.
Comment by Dorene — March 1, 2009 @ 7:24 pm
Here’s Maude Grieve from England:
http://www.botanical.com/botan.....7.html#rec
This is how to make the liquid — go from there with any other modern marshmallow recipe.
Comment by Dorene — March 1, 2009 @ 7:32 pm
Funny thing, Anne I’ve just finished reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food. A quote from the former:
“To visit a modern Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) is to enter a world that for all its technological sophistication is still designed on seventeenth-century Cartesian principles: Animals are treated as machines-“production units”-incapable of feeling pain. Since no thinking person can possibly believe this anymore, industrial animal agriculture depends on a suspension of disbelief on the part of the people who operate it and a willingness to avert one’s eyes on the part of everyone else.”
And how to “opt out” of industrial agriculture is covered quite thoroughly in the latter. And therein you may also find some answers to your very good questions about why so many Americans are so “helpless” about their food. A hint: corporate $$$$
I wonder how long it’s been since supermarket, major brand marshmallows had even a hint of Althea in them.
Comment by Susan Fox — March 1, 2009 @ 8:19 pm
Skin likes marsh mallow extract, too. My homemade soap recipe of choice uses marsh mallow extract as a base, and I can really tell the difference in my skin - particularly in the wintertime.
Comment by The OTHER Pat — March 1, 2009 @ 8:31 pm
I just adore you all! I give you a hint aka Althaea officinalis and you run with it! lol.
Comment by Anne T — March 1, 2009 @ 9:37 pm
Just don’t get them started on cilantro.
Comment by Susan Fox — March 1, 2009 @ 9:39 pm
NOT CILANTRO!
Comment by Christie Keith — March 1, 2009 @ 10:10 pm