Peanut butter, one of my all-time favorite food. Peanut butter sandwich. Peanut butter in kare-kare. Peanut butter eaten direct from the container. Unfortunately, my love for anything with peanut butter may be placed on a brief cooling-off period after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned about a Salmonella Typhimurium contamination to a plant owned by Peanut Corporation of America (PCA).
This, after the melamine contamination of certain Chinese milk products.
A housemate back in college said he prefers imported peanut butter because local brands are not as well-manufactured. Molds and other contaminants would be present in the local products, he said. He’s a Chemistry major so his words bear weight, but that didn’t stop me from purchasing locally-produced peanut butter (primarily because of its lower price). The preference for local peanut butter won’t change especially with the recent episode of US-based peanut butter contamination.
Still, let’s not generalize and say that all peanut butter products are contaminated — the report only points out one plant in the United States. The FDA is providing an updated list that includes food recalls since January 2009 related to peanut butter and peanut paste recalled by Peanut Corporation of America.
(Peanut butter photo courtesy of Wikipedia.)
