HILLSBOROUGH: It’s ‘J’ without the ‘PB’ after recall

By Eileen Oldfield, Staff Writer
   Nut cones and peanut butter crackers, affected by possible salmonella contamination, were pulled distribution before reaching cafeterias at Hillsborough High School and Hillsborough Middle School, a representative from the district’s food service provider said.
   Sodexo, the district’s food service provider, separated all foods containing peanuts or peanut parts following the initial recall, Kathy Majors, a food service general manager with the company said. The service has an alert system to send food recall alerts to its customers, and issued an alert after the Peanut Corporation of America issued its first recall, she said.
   ”We weren’t affected initially,” Ms. Majors said. “As the recall expanded, we decided to suspend any peanut butter/peanut paste products from the program as a safety precaution. After we suspended serving peanut paste products we learned that some of the products we would have been serving were involved in the recall.”
   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 recall initial list, a report on the United States Food and Drug Administration Web site read.
   The recalled snacks were taken off lunch menus, Ms. Majors said. Since the district does not serve peanut butter, the lunch menus were not affected beyond snack choices.
   Sodexo did not need to substitute snacks for the pulled items. The district has several snack items in-house, so removing the recalled items did not cost the district, Ms. Majors said.