• by February 3, 2009

 

Applauding retail giant Costco, along with Northeastern supermarket chains Wegmans and Price Chopper, for using data from membership or loyalty programs to notify consumers who bought recalled peanut products, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) Tuesday called on other large grocery and drug store chains to follow suit.

The volume of products recalled as a result of the ongoing salmonella outbreak--caused by peanut butter and peanut paste produced by Georgia's Peanut Corporation of America--has now swelled to nearly 900 items from some 100 suppliers, according to the latest data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Noting the FDA's method of disseminating all this recall info--urging consumers who have purchased peanut products to log in or call," CSPI food safety director Caroline Smith DeWaal declared: "There has to be a better way."

The better way, said CSPI staff attorney Sarah Klein, is for retailers to expand their loyalty programs beyond established marketing purposes in order "to protect the public health." Stores need to "use modern tools to notify customers directly," she said, adding that "consumers need more than coupons from loyalty programs."

In an open letter to food retailers sent on Tuesday, CSPI urged retailers to communicate all Class 1 recalls "via phone calls, emails or letters noting the specific products purchased and directing customers to discard or return the product for a refund."

The FDA's Web site, on the other hand, confronts consumers who log in with a list www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/peanutbutterrecall/PeanutButterProducts2009.pdf of recalled products that runs dozens of pages. The agency has also put all this info into an automatically updated widget www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/salmonellatyph/widget.html that retailers and others can embed onto their Web sites.

CSPI said that Costco has already notified 1.5 million customers via automated phone messages http://cspinet.org/audio/CliffBarRecall.mp3 and an unidentified number by mail (http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/costcoletter.pdf.

CSPI singled out CVS, Food Lion and Safeway as chains that collect purchasing data but do not notify customers about recalls.

The FDA's list of recalled products now includes brownies, cakes, pies, candy, cookies, crackers, donuts, fruit and vegetables, ice cream, pet foods, prepackaged meals, snack bars, snack mixes, toppings, and of course, peanut paste, peanut butter and plain old peanuts.