Salisbury-based Food Lion sent out an e-mail last week reassuring customers that it had pulled all items from its shelves that have been recalled due to the recent salmonella outbreak involving peanut products.
“We would like to assure you that Food Lion, LLC (including Food Lion, Bloom, Bottom Dollar, Reid’s and Harveys stores) is diligently working in cooperation with the FDA to pull all products that may contain contaminated peanut paste as an ingredient,” the Food Lion e-mail said. “The safety of our customers is our utmost concern.
“A number of products containing peanut butter or peanut paste have been recalled, including a few from our stores, however, peanut butter sold in jars at our stores is not affected.”
The Food and Drug Administration has traced the outbreak to products from the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), which manufactures peanut butter and peanut paste.
Several products have been recalled, the e-mail said. “Since this is still an active investigation, there may still be additional products recalled.”
The peanut butter being recalled is sold by PCA in bulk packaging to distributors for institutional food service industry use.
Information regarding the ongoing recalls can be found at the FDA Web site: www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/salmonellatyph.html.
Food Lion is also updating its own Web site: www.foodlion.com/recalls.
The Food and Drug Administration learned only weeks ago that the Peanut Corp. of America had received a series of private tests dating back to 2007 showing salmonella in their products from the Georgia plant, but later shipped the items after obtaining negative test results, according to the Associated Press.