Peanut butter makers fight to keep customers

By Shelby Erdman
CNN
(CNN) - In what appears to be an uphill battle, peanut butter makers not affected by the deadly salmonella outbreak linked to a Georgia peanut plant are trying to get consumers to keep buying peanut butter.

Companies such as Conagra Foods Incorporated and J.M. Smucker Company have started running ads and offering coupons, trying to lure peanut butter customers as sales have plunged at least 25 percent since the salmonella outbreak.

Eight people have died and nearly 600 have been sickened in the outbreak. The original peanut butter recall launched weeks ago has expanded to include more than 1,000 products.

Americans have shied from peanut butter despite the Food and Drug Administration's assurances that major-label peanut butter in grocery stores is safe.

"With eight dead and almost 600 sick, it's a time to be prudent," said Dr. Douglas Powell, an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University, which is the home of the International Food Safety Network.

There's another problem, Powell said: "None of these companies are really coming out and saying this is what we do to ensure safety. They say, yeah, we test for salmonella. But are those tests public? They're not."

Shoppers are wary because they just don't know which products are safe, he said.

Tainted peanut butter and peanut paste were shipped by Peanut Corporation of America to institutions such as schools, nursing homes and prisons, not to grocery store shelves. But that isn't preventing consumers from playing it safe.

Powell understands.

"If you're a parent packing a lunch and you have all the hectic things going on in the morning, is it really realistic to say, hey, before you put that peanut snack cracker individually wrapped item into your kid's lunch you're going to go onto the Internet and check a Web site? I think that's a bit much. I think it's prudent to avoid this stuff until we see where this is going."

The Peanut Corporation of America is now under investigation by the FDA and its plant in Blakely, Georgia, was raided by the FBI Monday morning, CNN affiliate WABL reported.