The interesting thing about the salmonella outbreak story, to me, is the size of the peanut-butter-industrial-complex. There’s King Nut, whose name is on the container. (Regal Legume would be better.) The King Nut company also makes “Parnell’s Pride” brand peanut butter. Was there ever a Parnell? Did his breast ever swell with glory when he beheld the crates of peanut butter streaming past on the assembly line, each bearing not only his name but his recipe, his secret, long-perfected means of coaxing only the finest essence from the lowly peanut, and blending it with a hint of spices whose exact composition he had never committed to paper?
No, I don’t think so. The name was probably invented to give the product a personality, a sense of tradition that trades on the greatest-generation legends, and makes you think of some wise peanut-patriarch who built the business up from nothing. There’s always backstory on the label, and you have no idea if it’s true:
“Pete ‘Peter’ Parnell made his first batch of peanut butter in his store in Yonkers in 1953, and it was a neighborhood favorite for decades. Folks still remember how Pete would say ‘Tr ths, ss gd’ because the peanut butter was totally stuck in his dentures. The store was closed in 1981, when Pete fell head-first into a vat and was suffocated, but we’ve reproduced his famous recipe. Enjoy! Or as Pete would say, ‘Njy!’”
Anyway. the story says King Nut and Parnell’s Pride were “not sold directly to consumers,” which means they were institutional brands, to use the lovely word. But it turns out that King Nut Company didn’t make the stuff; they got it from – ready? – the Peanut Corporation of America. PCA, says the story, “does not sell its products at grocery stores or directly to the public.” I’d bet they don’t make peanuts, either – they buy them from farmers. Like everything else, it takes many hands to bring a product to your table.
Before you freak out about poisoned peanut butter giving you the grippe, the trots, the hectic hurls, consider this: the PCA’s press release adds a detail you may not have heard:
"The salmonella was found in an open container of King Nut peanut butter at a nursing facility, which leaves open the possibility of cross contamination from another source."
It goes on:
"PCA is cooperating fully with U.S government agencies and independent laboratories in this investigation. To date, the only conclusive testing linking salmonella to PCA's product was done on an open container of the peanut butter in a large, institutional kitchen. The history of the handling of that open container is unknown at this time.
"Neither the Food and Drug Administration nor the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is prepared at this time to state definitively that PCA’s product is the source of the salmonella incident. This investigation is still in its very earliest stage."
So it could be a lazy cook who had raw-egg residue on her hand, and picked up a table knife by the blade, made a PB sandwich, and that was that. I’m having peanut butter for lunch, and will enjoy it with relish. By which I mean the psychological state of anticipatory enjoyment, not minced pickle-parts.
Institutional peanut butter
When I was a kid (back before they invented puberty) we used to get government surplus peanut butter in school. They'd have the big cans set on a table to one side of the main cafeteria line, and I resorted to it whenever the day's menu featured something I didn't like.
The government peanut butter had clearly been formulated for the military, because it was olive green in color.
I loved it anyway. Never met a peanut butter I didn't love.