Reality Check

Peanut butter taken off shelves | The Bryan-College Station Eagle

Ok, here’s the deal… First spinach, now peanut butter? 

Awhile back I was talking on the Trans Asian Axis web site with some folks and said "If I were them, I’m do something to the food sources".

I think they have been.  Two weeks ago, I got home from work, opened a bottle of homebrew, and made myself two peanut butter sandwiches for my dinner.  My wife was working and I didn’t feel like cooking, and I’ll eat peanut butter any time of the day or night.

About five or six hours later, I was sick as a dog.  I chalked it up to something other than the peanut butter at first. Later, I realized the PB was what made me ill, but I had severe heart burn and all that later turned worse.

That particular jar had been opened just before Thanksgiving.  My wife had made our grand daughter a sandwich from it as well.  She’d gotten ill the next day.  We never made the connection.

So, when I heard all this I went into the kitchen when I got home yesterday evening and checked the product code on the lid. 

Yes, as you guessed, it was indeed a "tainted" jar.  As you all know, hopefully by now, I keep a bit of food in the house.  That means, folks I have somewhere close to 10 jars of peanut butter.  That one was opened in November and there are roughly ten jars.  We go shopping once a month and usually buy one jar. 

Some of that stuff has been sitting there a year or so.  This means this "tainted jar" (which has only had three sandwiches made from it, and went into the garbarge last night) has been "tainted" for awhile now.  Perhaps as long ago as a year.  Most certainly at least six months.

So, my question is, how did the salmonella find its way into the food in the first place? Into apparently very LARGE batches of peanut butter?

Let me quote from the article cited here on this blog entry:

How the dangerous germ got into the peanut butter was a mystery. But because peanuts are usually heated to high, germ-killing temperatures during the manufacturing process, government and industry officials said the contamination may have been caused by dirty jars or equipment.

Dirty equipment?  There’s not a "government health inspector" checking the plant sometimes? 

Dirty Jars?  They run them through a cleaning process right after they are made usually.  Many times the jars are made right there in another plant, or near by and simply made then cleaned and moved through the assembly line on conveyors, where they jars are filled, sealed and capped, then labels added by a finishing machine, then a certain quantity packed into boxes for shipping.

Where does salmoella find it’s way into a whole hell of a lotta peanut butter without someone deliberately adding a dose of something, somewhere along the path?

We’ve had an awful lot of "little incidents" over the course since 9-11, and each and every one has been ruled out as a terrorist act.  But, really, are they completely innocent incidents where no human being has had any evil intention, or are we being duped by Home Land Security — oh, you know to "keep the public from panicing" or causing "unnecessary violence" in retaliation?

I honestly think it is the latter and though I have no proof whatsoever at this point, I’m going to start pointing out these incidents.  And I’m calling on everyone to start calling on our supposed "protectors" to start telling the facts in these cases.  Don’t keep this stuff from us, we’re big people, adults and can handle the truth.

I’m really getting sick of people who "hide facts" so as not to get the "public in an uproar".  That isn’t the America I grew up in, and I’ll be damned if I sit around and media and the government "desensitize" us to the facts.

If this is attempted terrorism, I think it is time that comes out in the wash, and we start looking at places where potential terrorism can be perpetrated on the public, without the knowledge of the public, and no one is doing a damned thing to stop it.

Update: 8:23 — Link for more on the bacteria, salmonella, http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/salmonellosis_g.htm