I think it is irresponsible for the University to fan the flames and claim that ALL peanut containing foods are suspect and need to be removed from the shelves.

Our USDA/FDA food system was sidestepped by the president of Peanut Corp of America when he allegedly sent out e-mails wanting "to turn the raw peanuts on our floor into money", and the company blatantly sent out Salmonella positive product into our marketplace.

The offending lots of peanut products have been identified, and any food producer has been made aware of the recalled lots and has been working with the FDA to provide recall information. I've never seen the recall website so full before: http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/salmonellatyph.html

All producers who follow the law would be testing their final product for Salmonella presence, so pulling perfectly good/safe/tested product off the shelves is irresponsible.

Did they pull all milk off the shelves when there was a melamine problem in China? The only thing that I can think of as why they would do this would be for PR to show they "are doing something" about the safety of their students, though it is hurtful in the long run in getting the correct information into the hands of their students.

... which is what I thought Universities were supposed to do...

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I think it's proactive. I've been watching the fda.gov site and see new products added daily since January 30th. There are no peanut or peanut butter products being eaten in my house either.

If I have to choose between being called names and telling me I'm over-reacting, or having my kids become deathly ill, there's no doubt in my mind about my choice.

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inflammatory and fearful. While the list of recalled products continues to grow, it has been clear all along that the problem has been peanut paste/butter that is used as an *ingredient* in other products. There have been no indications by even the most aggressive recallers or investigators that there is any problem with consumer-available peanut butter.

All responsible releases at all levels of investigation have consistently sworn up and down that peanut butter is *not* a problem.

The only indicator that peanut butter is involved is that some TV news segments on the subject have used stock footage of peanut butter to illustrate the segment. That's misleading -- possibly to the point of being lawsuit bait, since it can damage sales of a product not involved in the recalls by implying that it's unsafe.

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I don't want to nitpick, but Penn State and the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) are different. Sorry, I just had to point it out as a Penn State student :)

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I think this is probably more telling about our litigation-happy society. They have to go over board in order to protect their own butts, and get to act like they're protecting the students.

I'm headed for a PB&J sandwich, anyone wanna come?

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