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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning consumers not to use certain jars of Earth’s Best Organic 2 Apple Peach Barley Wholesome Breakfast baby food because of the risk of contamination with Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium which can cause botulism, a life-threatening illness or death. Consumers are warned not to use the product even if it does not look or smell spoiled.

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Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
 
Ikes! Luckily, the stuff is too expensive for us. My mom buys it occasionally but only the stage 1 one-food ones, when they're on sale AND she has a coupon. I'll forward this to her, though. Thanks for the warning.
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
I also buy the stage one (on sale, with coupon). The pureed veggies make great kugel.
 

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Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
 
I try not to buy organic stuff. Better living through chemistry, I say. Preservatives and antibiotics and other such things are there for a reason.
 

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Posted by Christine (Member # 8594) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by ketchupqueen:
Ikes! Luckily, the stuff is too expensive for us.

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LOL...right there with you. Also, luckily for me, my son decided he was too old for baby food at 9 months!
 

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Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
 
So, I found this stuff on the shelf at the grocery store today. I am fairly sure that it was part of the affected batch (although I couldn't remember the exact numbers so I wasn't POSITIVE.)

I called over an employee, asked for the manager, gave them a jar of the product and asked them to check and make sure that the jars on the shelf were not part of the recall, and if they were, to remove them. They took it very seriously. I was pleased. (I have not had great customer service experiences at that Ralph's. But when you say "FDA recall for botulism", they get right on it, apparently.)
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
Good job, kq.
 

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Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
 
Phew! You might have saved some lives there, ketchupqueen. Nice going.

Would a food's organic status make it more likely to contain botulism? I thought botulism tended to be due to improper sterilization before canning. Does the organic label prevent heat sterilization or washing in bleach solution?
 

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Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
 
If the botulism was introduced AFTER the product was heated but before it was sealed, I think that it the "ideal" time for contamination (from the botulism's point of view.) I am under the impression that even organic baby food is heated, etc. There have been other foods that have been contaminated with botulism, in the past, and I think they have to be contaminated under the same cirucumstances (after food is cool enough that it won't die, before it is sealed) to be dangerous, right?
 

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Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
 
Good work, kq.

In trying to piece through how botulism occurs, it is worth distinguishing between the organism, the spores of the organism, and the toxins produced by the organism. It is the botulinum toxin that causes the problem, and the organism produces the toxin when it is in an anaerobic environment over about 50 deg F. The spores are a longterm storage version of the organism, and they can survive far higher and lower temperatures than the organism.

Any food that is contaminated by the organism in the period of appropriate temperature could have rising levels of the botulinum toxin (and it only takes a bit). The period of cooling after sterilization would be an ideal time for this infection, and organic foods (at least, those with standard heat and pressure processing) wouldn't be any more likely than any other food to experience this, as far as I know.

However, if the sterilization process was not quite up to par, the organic food might well be more likely to have had botulinum spores that survived the (improper) sterilization process and thus were present and viable to start producing toxin afterward.
 

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