The Great Peanut Butter Panic

It recently occurred to me that the list of "unsafe" foods has become almost unbelievable. Is it possible that this many food items can legitimately be unsafe for our consumption? Spinach, lettuce, scallions, and peanut butter are all recent examples of widespread food contamination scares. What gives?

I can understand maybe a mass hysteria over tainted clams or oysters. But peanut butter? What could possibly be next? Is there going to be a recall of Fruity Pebbles because of salmonella-fied sugar? Why does it seem to be so much more common in recent years? What has changed? Somehow, I don't recall hearing of all these panicky food scares as a kid. I remember the urban legends of course. McDonald's serving meat fortified with earthworm. Pop Rocks and Coke swelling you up until you explode. But those were rare stories and usually only taken seriously by 10 year olds like me.

But this new stuff is serious business. People dying from tainted food. How does that happen with all our massive governmental regulation? Is the system that flawed or are the germs just really sneaky ninja germs? About an hour ago my wife threw away a seemingly innocent jar of Great Value peanut butter with the evil batch number we have been told to look for from ConAgra. I looked at it pretty hard and I really couldn't see the little salmonella bugs anywhere. Nevertheless we pitched it in the trash just in case. Kinda ticked me off to be honest. It already had a few spoonfuls missing. So either the culprit who did that had a really strong immune system or there were no salmonella ninja bugs in it at all. I'm leaning towards the latter scenario, but better safe than sorry I suppose.