By Eileen Oldfield, Staff Writer
Lunch is no longer as simple as peanut butter and jelly, since the once-staple lunch time meal won’t be served in Manville school cafeterias.
Pomptonian Inc., the district’s food service provider, suspended use and sale of items containing peanuts and peanut products in response to salmonella contamination in peanut products nationwide, a letter on the Manville School District’s Web site read.
According to the Jan. 30 letter, vendors have been asked to cease shipment of peanut products, and managers have been advised to refuse items listing peanuts as an ingredient. Storerooms have been check, and peanut-containing items removed as well.
Since Peanut Corporation of America’s Jan. 13 recall, over 400 products containing peanut butter, paste, meal, granules, and whole peanuts were added to the initial list, a report on the United States Food and Drug Administration Web site read.
Substituting other products for the forbidden peanut butter comes at no cost to the district, since Pomptonian issued a voluntary and precautionary product recall, Business Administrator and Board Secretary Richard Reilly said. Pomptonian handled all aspects of the pulled products, though none of the food Manville received included the contaminated products, he added.
Pulling the peanut products did not change the lunch menus, since the entrees do not include peanuts or peanut products. However, the district changed the lunch option for students who forget lunch and don’t have money on their swipe-card account.
”Basically, the only part of the lunch menu that was affected is that Pomptonian provides, if a student doesn’t have money for lunch, they’ll get a peanut butter sandwich,” Mr. Reilly said. “For now, they’re given a cheese sandwich instead.”
Mr. Reilly did not know when peanut butter and other peanut products would come off Pomptonian’s forbidden food list, and said the district would handle reintroducing the food on a month-by-month basis.

