SAFEWAY STORES INVOLVED IN ORGANIC SEED RECALL

Seeds, as well as our food, can be contaminated with bacteria, even though they are dry. That also goes for organic seeds. Salmonella bacteria are the most common, in part because they can tolerate dry conditions very well.

So that is what we have turning up now in a Safeway recall. The product is organic celery seeds. The contaminant, Salmonella bacteria. Remember - although in most cases, getting a sufficient number of these bacteria in your food will only give you a few very miserable days of food poisoning, occasionally it can get into your bloodstream, and lead to more serious illness and long-term health problems.

Here are the basic facts: B&M, Inc. of Mount Vernon, Missouri is voluntarily recalling O Organics Organic Celery Seed sold at all Safeway-owned stores. That includes Safeway, Carrs, Dominick’s, Genuardi’s, Pak ‘N Save, Pavilions, Randalls, Tom Thumb and Vons. Presumably, this product was distributed nationwide in the U.S. as one or other of these stores is almost everywhere.

The seeds come in a 1.8oz (51g) glass bottle (see photo). It is marked with a UPC code of 0-7989341124-8 (if you have bought it, look for this code on the bottom of the bottle). The product was sold at stores from May 25, 2011, through December 16, 2011.

Be careful - "healthy" seeds are not healthy in this case.

To your good health,

TSF

SAFEWAY AND THE TOMATO RECALL

Safeway shoppers check your refrigerators!

Safeway stores are one of the several supermarkets involved in the latest tomato recall (see previous posts) which began with a recall by Six L Packers in Florida. First, Safeway stores sold Taylor Farms Pacific Inc. ready-to-eat fresh salads at the deli counter, several of which may contain Salmonella-infected grape tomatoes. The states in which these products were sold by Safeway include Arizona, Oregon, California, Nevada, Washington, New Mexico, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado and Utah.

Secondly, Safeway has discovered that the ready-to-cook kabobs (all kinds of fish, chicken, turkey, pork and sausage ones) in its full service meat counter were also made with Six L tomatoes, so a long list of kabobs are being recalled as well. These are likely to be less risky than the fresh salads because we would cook them.

The kabobs were sold between April 26 and May 3. The sell-by date on the packages are up to May 3. The kabobs were sold in Safeway, Vons, Pavilions, and Pak N Save stores in 10 states. If you don't want to return them to the store, you could also just pick off the tomatoes and throw them out.


TSF