How Expensive Are the Peanut Butter Recalls?
Bill Marler, the lawyer whose specialty is helping clients obtain compensation for food poisonings, knows as much about food safety - or the lack thereof - as anyone I know. He estimates the total cost of the peanut butter recalls as close to $1 billion. This accounts for the costs of the recalls themselves ($75 million to Kellogg alone), as well as the costs of lost sales, advertising and public relations, and stock prices. And that’s just to the companies. Perhaps he will do another estimate for the 677 people (as of March 1) who are known to have become ill as a result.
In the meantime, the fact that Peanut Corporation of America filed for bankruptcy is unlikely to affect victims’ ability to collect damages. Much of those costs will be covered by insurance.
I guess food companies think it’s cheaper to do things this way than to produce safe food in the first place. That, of course, is why we need better federal oversight, and the sooner the better.
Guidance alert, just in: the FDA has issued after-the-fact advice to the industry about how to produce peanuts safely.
Update March 12: Phil Lempert, the Supermarket Guru, polled readers about the recalls. All knew about them and most were not buying recalled products. But 45% said they had stopped buying peanut butter, even though regular peanut butter was not involved in the recalls.
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Marion Nestle is Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health and Professor of Sociology at New York University. Her degrees include a Ph.D. in molecular biology and an M.P.H. in public health nutrition, both from the University of California, Berkeley.
She is the author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism and What to Eat.
You can read her Food Politics blog here:
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Comments
Julie Fairweather
If only this money could have gone towards health care. Sad that such a tragedy could have been avoided with the proper regulation -- like some other recent tragedies I can think of!
Leigh Skinner
Trusting the FDA to protect food is like trusting the wolf to protect Little Red Riding Hood. This goes for our current economic mess as the Fed does all the things that have never worked before. That's what many call insanity, doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
When I was a child in the late 1950's, there were commercials on TV and lectures in school about how to wash one's hands and handle food to avoid problems with contamination. This was at a time the government actually did protect us. But back then we didn't have trouble with lice on children in school, either, so a lot has changed in the way we protect, or don't protect, ourselves.
Peanut Butter isn't the problem. Part of the problem is with some of the manufacturers who are given licenses to manufacture it. The other part of the problem is our immune systems. During the spinach scare last year, I continued to buy and eat it, and I didn't get sick. Neither did 99.9% of the population. The only people that did were a handful of sick, or very young, or very old people with compromised immune systems. And many people don't eat spinach regularly, so that helped them. The rest of us went ahead eating it without problems. We are bombarded daily by organisms, and that's life. Our bodies are supposed to throw off such things.
Any government that says they can protect us from that is lying to you. Watch the film "Soylent Green" with Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson to understand where our food system is headed. Not necessarily with the solution in the film, but with the food shortage problem as government decides what we eat until all food is gone.
k131smith
Be careful what you wish for:
When has the Government ever made anything better? Why not consider less regulation and better enforcement of fewer laws. I agree with Leigh "Trusting the FDA to protect food is like trusting the wolf to protect Little Red Riding Hood."
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