For the Sake of the PB&J

Whats going on with food.

This week, Trader Joe’s announced a recall of all of its peanut butter made from May 1 to September 24 2012. Ok, not great, but manageably controlled, right? Well it turns out that just “to be safe” the company that makes the Trader Joe’s brand peanut butter recalled all other nut based spreads it sells. Oh and by the way it makes the peanut butter for Target and Earth Balance, too. Wait…what? See the list of all recalled items here (http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/02/usda-releases-study-on-peanut-industry/#.UGNvPBimXoA)

This one company nobody would know of (its called Sunland, Inc. by the way) basically makes all the peanut butter short of the big guys like JIF or Skippy, and they haven’t gone without their own scandals. Anybody remember the peanut butter recall of 2008? That went as far as affecting Keebler peanut butter cookies for christ sake! The peanut butter and jelly is arguably the most American sandwich, and if you can’t even trust the distributors of one of the essential ingredients to that sandwich…I mean, what do we have to say for ourselves?!

The bottom line is, we can’t provide an adequate defense. This is not the first time this has happened, and we have yet to do anything but band-aid these smaller outbreaks with recalls when the issue here is our food distribution system. We as a nation are far too accustomed to being able to get whatever we want whenever we want it…especially when it comes to food. We want it at the corner store, cheap. And we want it in constant, even excessive, supply (dammit!).

So what am I saying, we should lose our right to mass produce peanut butter? No, what I am saying is these recalls and contamination outbreaks are happening more frequently, and they are not going to stop. When you think about these singular companies that are making peanut butter for the majority of the entire nation, can we even be that surprised that this is happening? In factories as large as these are sure to be, how realistic is it to think that a sterile and ideal peanut butter (or anything else, for that matter) manufacturing environment can sustain without so much as a slip. Plus, as large as these peanut butter conglomerates certainly are, don’t forget that they need to keep the prices super low so people will buy their peanut butter and not the ground-in-the-store kind for 2 dollars more. So cut all the unnecessary expenses you can, jack.

What needs to happen is that we need to realize that the distributive system we have is not ideal. The entire nation’s food lies in the hands of so few companies-we are literally putting all of our eggs into a couple of giant baskets. Now, I’m not saying the way that we feed our country will change overnight. Starting to make more conscious decisions about where we buy our food can only help us, however. If we as consumers aim to support local providers over large companies, we could make room for a great deal of local industry. Think of all those thriving, modest peanut butter companies, safe and salmonella free. Wouldn’t that be much more fun for everybody?

And, if you think that our food distribution woes are limited to outbreaks of salmonella in peanut butter factories, think again, and read this article, which is so brutally real I couldn’t bring myself to comment on it.

(http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57519703/global-bacon-shortage-unavoidable-group-says/)