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Million Jars of Peanut Butter Dumped In New Mexico Landfill
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "The Guardian reports that a million jars of peanut butter are going to be dumped in a New Mexico landfill and bulldozed over after retailer Costco refused to take shipment of the peanut butter and declined requests to let it be donated to food banks or repackaged or sold to brokers who provide food to institutions like prisons. The peanut butter comes from a bankrupt peanut-processing plant that was at the heart of a salmonella outbreak in 2012 and although 'all parties agreed there's nothing wrong with the peanut butter from a health and safety issue,' court records show that on a 19 March conference call Costco said 'it would not agree to any disposition ... other than destruction.'
The product was tested extensively and determined to be safe. Costco initially agreed to allowing the peanut butter to be sold, but rejected it as 'not merchantable' because of leaking peanut oil. So instead of selling or donating the peanut butter, with a value estimated at $2.6m, the estate is paying about $60,000 to transport 950,000 jars – or about 25 tons – to the Curry County landfill in Clovis, where public works director Clint Bunch says it 'will go in with our regular waste and covered with dirt'. Despite the peanut butter being safe, Curry County landfill employee Tim Stacy says that no one will be able to consume the peanut butter once it's dumped because it will be immediately rolled over with a bulldozer, destroying the supply. Stacy added more trash will then be dumped on top of the pile. Sonya Warwick, spokeswoman for New Mexico's largest food bank, declined to comment directly on the situation, but she noted that rescued food accounted for 74% of what Roadrunner Food Bank distributed across New Mexico last year. 'Access to rescued food allows us to provide a more well-rounded and balanced meal to New Mexicans experiencing hunger.'"
The product was tested extensively and determined to be safe. Costco initially agreed to allowing the peanut butter to be sold, but rejected it as 'not merchantable' because of leaking peanut oil. So instead of selling or donating the peanut butter, with a value estimated at $2.6m, the estate is paying about $60,000 to transport 950,000 jars – or about 25 tons – to the Curry County landfill in Clovis, where public works director Clint Bunch says it 'will go in with our regular waste and covered with dirt'. Despite the peanut butter being safe, Curry County landfill employee Tim Stacy says that no one will be able to consume the peanut butter once it's dumped because it will be immediately rolled over with a bulldozer, destroying the supply. Stacy added more trash will then be dumped on top of the pile. Sonya Warwick, spokeswoman for New Mexico's largest food bank, declined to comment directly on the situation, but she noted that rescued food accounted for 74% of what Roadrunner Food Bank distributed across New Mexico last year. 'Access to rescued food allows us to provide a more well-rounded and balanced meal to New Mexicans experiencing hunger.'"
In this litigious society, who can blame them. You can damn near guarantee that they'd have hit one bad jar in a lot that large and gotten the tar sued out of them. If you want to fix this situation and make sure it never happens again, demand tort reform in this country.
Where full belly people laughing tell poor countries: do some work, you lazy bastards.
The company shut down in 2012. These were produced prior to the company's closure. This is probably not safe for human consumption at this point.
Consumer peanut butter's got a shelf life of roughly a year or two at most, generally. This stuff is on the edge of that point, if not past. A million jars of peanut butter being donated would probably sit on the shelves in a home being eaten over the course of a few months, which definitely puts it past the point where the peanut oil may begin going rancid -- and that's not accounting for all the jars that will sit in storage, probably for months if not years, waiting to be given out.
Donated food is usually donated because something was mislabelled or a pallet came loose and it wasn't suitable for sale due to damage to the container that doesn't jeopardize the product itself. This has been in storage for years. This is not suitable for donation, this is a bunch of jerks trying to make themselves look good and try to drum up donations while making a company that HAS given them donations in the past look bad because they're not giving them donations right now.
E.T. loves his peanut butter pieces...
isn't that less than one ounce per jar?
I'm imagining a bull dozer with peanut butter all over it's tracks. Peanut butter everywhere. Gumming up the dozer works. That would be nice to see. I'm sure there's a legal reason for it. Like Costco can't completely remove liability if someone gets sick from it. No matter what one law says, there's always another just around the corner to bite you in the ass when you give something away.
This could put the E.T. documentary guys in a sticky situation.
Required reading for internet skeptics
... then the news and legal worlds would turn on Costco like a pack of rabid dogs. Yes, this destruction of nutritious food seems like a terrible, horrible waste; but if there's even a chance that one single jar is tainted with salmonella, and someone gets sick, then the tone would change in a heartbeat to "heartless corporation knowingly rids itself of poisoned food". I can't blame them for playing it safe.
Well, at least all of the Atari E.T. cartridges now have an accompanying snack food.
million jars of peanut butter
Jars of peanut butter come in many different sizes. Could you please convert the amount to Olympic Sized Swimming Pools?
Thanks.
Brave Sir Robin ran away. ("No!") Bravely ran away away. ("I didn't!")
Clinton signed the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Emerson_Good_Samaritan_Act_of_1996
So no legal reason no to donate food.
Dumping $2.6 million worth of editable food when there are people starving is shocking to most of us. Yet, this is a reflection of our current law suit happy society.
Most of us has very little to loose and most food banks has very little to loose so our local food bank gladly take in our donated food items and we happily go on with our lives do what we can for people who are starving, one canned food at a time. Also, I've volunteered at the local food banks and base on what I've seen, Costco peanut butter is probably an upgrade to the various expired high fructose laden supermarket rejects.
Life is very different for our newly anointed fellow big corporate beings. In their billion dollar world, with their million dollar lawyers, somewhere, somehow, the meaning of starving people became irrelevant. After all, corporations do not understand the physical pain of starvation.
Peanut Butter landfill time....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
"All parties agreed there's nothing wrong with the peanut butter from a health and safety issue" isn't legally binding on anyone who might later decide to sue the company. At best it might make lawsuits harder depending on what the exact liability rules are. Furthermore, even if they win the lawsuit, fighting one will cost money and bad publicity, especially when the newspapers can use the spin "it's from a plant that was condemned for salmonella poisoning, how irresponsible can this megacorp be?"
If they give away the peanut butter, they stand to lose quite a bit with nothing to gain except a little good publicity (said good publicity going down the toilet if anyone actually sues).
There's a law that avoids liability for food donation:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-104publ210/pdf/PLAW-104publ210.pdf
The article summary does a good job of making it sound like Costco is the unreasonable bad guy in this, but every story has two sides. Why is Costco insisting on destroying the peanut butter?
Is it to avoid claims for payment on the shipment from the bankruptcy estate? Is it fears for later liability? Is it, as the summary tries very hard to imply, sheer obstinate evil?
If you're not going to even attempt to hide your bias, why even bother?
With these click-bait posts from Hugh Whazzizname's blog multiple times a day here on Slashdot?
Or at least give us an effective way to block stories by submitter?
#DeleteChrome
Assuming you're right, that may work in the courts. With a judge. That definitely won't matter with the court of public opinion and probably wouldn't work with a jury.
Humans are not 100% efficient? I can't believe it, I mean we're all statistical robots are heart... Right? Right...???
Please give this tainted "butter" to some needy 3rd-world shiathole. I will feel better in my mansion.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
That would be delicious.
Will that law repair the public image damage that would occur? Not a chance.
Nope. Liability can only happen in the case of gross negligence. Clinton signs a bill to this effect.
I suspect that this might have to do with the fact that the jars were leaking/ But, hey that means it makers sense and isn't some corporation being meanies, or some false idea that it's due to the tort system. Which, btw, is fine and the amount of 'odd lawsuits' is very, very low.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What "all parties have agreed to" for the narrow purpose of settling a bankruptcy suit is not the same thing as "accepting legal responsibility for the charitable distribution of perishable foods that have been in storage for a minimum of two years."
If you want to ignite a food riot in a school or prison, serving rancid peanut butter is as good as any place to begin.
A little salmonella never killed nobody.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
If they donate the peanut butter, no-one will buy peanut butter. Seriously, that's what it boils down to. Greedy fucking corporations, as usual - they only ever do anything charitable so long as it doesn't negatively impact them.
Donate what we refuse to sell? Fuck that! Capitalism means that if I have to burn down every peanut tree* in order to sell peanut butter, I will.
*Note to self, look up where peanuts come from.
of the starving people in India!
and
What's wrong with this picture?
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
(lol)
... then the news and legal worlds would turn on Costco like a pack of rabid dogs. Yes, this destruction of nutritious food seems like a terrible, horrible waste; but if there's even a chance that one single jar is tainted with salmonella, and someone gets sick, then the tone would change in a heartbeat to "heartless corporation knowingly rids itself of poisoned food". I can't blame them for playing it safe.
I agree. Lawsuits for every little thing are so prevalent now that I wouldn't take the slightest chance of doing something at work that could result in one.
The problem is so bad now that people completely unqualified for critical life-safety jobs are now safe in their positions despite the cost to other peoples lives. I deal with this every day, and there is nothing I can do, without being sued out of home and life...
I remember performing the recall for Peter Pan in the area. We were paid cash to go to local stores and warehouses and purchase the product. I had to destroy it following USDA and FDA requirements. That was 12,760 pounds of peanut butter.
A number that won't soon leave my head. the pictures of the world's happiest dog still are with me. I had the full suite going on, a rental truck to pick up pallets worth, & the bank, calling to ask if I had fraudulent charges at the local grocery store chain. it's a great story I continue to share to this day
If they had donated it to charity, and even ONE person had gotten sick from salmonella, the liability and potential damages to Costco would be huge. Can you blame them?
Are people the only animals that consume peanut butter? Can't this be converted to biodiesel or something? I understand the concern for human illness, but aren't there other options?
Why is this going to landfill - how backward is that? Who does landfill anymore? That stuff is full of oils and proteins. It could be turned into biodiesel or put into a furnace to generate heat and electricity.
How's the decision to destroy it working in the court of public opinion?
Why can't they be up front, open, honest: "We wouldn't eat these jars of peanut butter, but they've tested safe. Take them at your own risk."
The article notes that food banks remove the labels anyway.
This sort of thing has happened before, and it will happen again. An even better example was when the MV Cougar Ace almost sank, and 4700 brand new Mazda cars hung at a 60 degree angle for several months. They never moved, and they were all in seemingly perfect condition.
Mazda chose to err on the side of caution, rather than risk a lawsuit. Or even worse, there was a very valid concern that they would become "Katrina Cars". A coat of paint, and they would be bundled up and sold in some other unsuspecting country. (On a side-note, the destruction process is really cool!.)
With waivers not being worth the paper they're printed on, it's simply not worth the risk of getting sued.
And finally, there's the "soft damage" to take into consideration? Remember the kid in preschool who "had cooties"? That kid KEPT those cooties, right up until graduation day in high school. Costco might never allow a single jar to hit their normal distribution system, but just the simple fact that the peanut butter even exists at all, is a risk that someone, somewhere, will say, "Whoa, Costco peanut butter might have salmonella."
Play "Telephone" with that for a while, and suddenly Costco can't pay someone to take a jar of peanut butter. This is actually a very safe, very beneficial tactic for Costco.
Now consumers can be absolutely guaranteed that they will never have to think about whether Costco peanut butter is safe.
And in retail, that's money in the bank.
[End Of Line]
There's a law that avoids liability for food donation:
"Avoids" is much too strong a word.
State and local health regulations are not superseded.
You remain legally responsible for injuries or deaths which result from your gross negligence or intentional misconduct. If it comes out in court that you donated food you knew had gone bad or was very likely to have gone bad, you are in trouble,
Ok so maybe nothing can be done with the peanut butter but that sounds like alot of glass or plastic that could at least be recycled.
No. But a week of Honey Boo Boo and Jersey Shore will.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The underlying story may be this:
1) We don't know what actually happened between Costco and the testing facilities and suppliers. Even though samples were tested, there could be a concern that there were problems in the food that was not tested. Costco has not handled the public relations about this incident in a sensible manner: Costco officials did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
2) Costco has become poorly managed since James Sinegal is no longer CEO.
Ten years ago, Costco was wonderful. It was easy to make decisions about buying anything we saw at Costco, because someone else had been careful to stock only reputable products, products that people would buy if they had done serious research. Now we have to do our own research.
Costco employees still praise James Senegal. They sometimes criticize the poor quality of items that Costco now stocks.
Why on Earth do you think that the appropriate way to punish the bigwigs making these decisions is to make the employees' lives harder?
If people had the willies simply because it was associated with a bad company, they could have separated the peanut oil for biofuel and composted the rest. I bet it would have made a rich and perfectly safe compost.
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Please don't do this Costco will not be affected by it, you'll just be inconveniencing and aggravating the staff who will have to restock them.
Deeper pockets? In the end their lawyers told them that anything short of declaring it unfit for human consumption wasn't safe. The reason they did this is because of scumbag other humans who decide to try to sue for millions because they got some rancid peanut butter. Make sure you place the blame properly....
Lol, just lol... Why would anybody phrase it as "New Mexicans experiencing hunger". As if it's nothing more than an unpleasant experience... Lol, Americans are crazy.
On topic, just fix our environmental policy. Charge more money for destruction and waste disposal. And don't just dump stuff in a landfill, as if you're some sort of third world country.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm beginning to agree. Clearly, they are indeed often, psychotic, evil people. From whom we should remove the means to exist in our society.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This publicity can't possibly be worse than the publicity they would get if the public though costco was playing lose with food safety. People would be afraid to shop there and they would lose a LOT of customers.
CostCo still would be out millions of dollars defending itself, even if it won every case and every appeal. You don't get paid back 100% of your legal costs by the government when you win.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
I can't help but think that there are many dark regions of the Globe where smooth Valencia nut butter would be considered to be an extravagant American delicacy. Even if it was nearing the recommended expiration date. Ship it all to Africa?? China?? India?? Anywhere without lawyers, I guess.
I agree. Lawsuits for every little thing are so prevalent now that I wouldn't take the slightest chance of doing something at work that could result in one.
The problem is so bad now that people completely unqualified for critical life-safety jobs are now safe in their positions despite the cost to other peoples lives. I deal with this every day, and there is nothing I can do, without being sued out of home and life...
This seems completely contradictory. If everything is so litigious, how are these unqualified people in critical life-safety jobs?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
They'd be sued in state court. The federal law, by its terms, does not override state law. Therefore the law is pretty much meaningless, though it is certainly well-intentioned.
In true Slashdot spirit, I've only read the summary, but even that was enough to tell me that Costco is doing the right thing here.
The jars are not sealed. They might test OK now, but by the time the food banks get through the stock, who knows what organisms have made the jar their home.
The world is more complicated than you think. Best be honest with yourself about this.
Ten years ago, Costco was wonderful. It was easy to make decisions about buying anything we saw at Costco, because someone else had been careful to stock only reputable products, products that people would buy if they had done serious research. Now we have to do our own research.
and yet you wonder why Costco wants to distance itself from a suspect supplier and a million jars of peanut butter that may go rancid before they can be distributed?
That wouldn't stop someone fro suing and dragging along an expensive case. Their shady lawyers would argue gross negligence and keep fighting and fighting. Eventually, a settlement would probably be the cheapest, though still expensive, option.
Costco has deep pockets, meaning that they'd be a tempting target for a suit, even though it would be a bullshit one. Particularly since the lawyer could play the PR battle. Roll out the crying mother who's child had been killed or given a debilitating condition by the evil corporate scumbags who had pushed out that tainted peanut butter. Doesn't matter that it is bullshit, matters what the public hears. Costco's business takes a major hit for no reason and there's fuck-all they can do about it.
So better to just avoid it entirely.
Even though samples were tested, there could be a concern that there were problems in the food that was not tested.
There is actually a principle in the regulation of food and pharamceuticals that you can't "test quality into a product."
You build quality into a product by controlling the manufacture, and testing really just serves as a confirmation that all went well.
There is no way to sample peanut butter such that you can be certain that there isn't a microbe in the part of the peanut butter you didn't test. Now, you can make that risk fairly low as you sample more and more, but if there was reason to suspect the integrity of the product in the first place then you can imagine the lawyers lining up.
And, as others pointed out, if they give away product for free they still face liability, make no money, and potentially undercut their own sales. If some poor guy dies of salmonella you can imagine the tales of a company feeding them peanut butter that they'd already determined isn't good enough for ordinary people...
The problem is, that 'no wrongdoing' verdict might come after years of litigation, costing millions of dollars, a non-zero amount of business impact (people getting depositioned, document discovery, etc etc) and who knows how much lost customer goodwill.
After all, smoke=fire, mud sticks, etc etc.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
You didn't seem to realize that you are agreeing with what I said.
What I said is that Costco may be justified in its actions, but that what we seem to know is that Costco management is not handling the public relations well.
You are agreeing with what I said. You said it with more details.
Someone needs to score all this and repackage it as plastics polish.
You'd make a fortune.
Costco just doesn't trust the fuckers.
They lied and fucked up once Costco isn't trusting them to not be bullshitting them again with bogus lab reports or other falsified tests.
Sleazball goes and buys a few crated of Jiffy off the shelf repackaged it because he has access to the manufacturing line. Hands them over to lab: "These are random samples." Lab says they're safe. 50% of the rest of the stock is contaminated, or pulled from warehoused supply of contaminated stock. Costco is fucked.
a million pounds is not enough to be worth using in this manner
Except that the tale is incorrect.
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/pl...
Futurist Traditionalism
Quite. People are ready to lynch Costco for applying some sort of standards to what they will buy and put on the shelf. They will reject things that Walmart will happily accept. This is by no means the first time. This is probably not the first pile of food to be "wasted" because Costco chose to err on the side of safety.
I can understand why they simply don't want to be associated with the listeria outbreak factory. It boggles my mind that ANY ONE here wants to push the issue.
Even if they've tested this stuff, I would still be suspicious of it just because of where it came from.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm with you at the boycott, but please don't make the poor workers suffer for the sins of their bigwigs. Them having to restock the jars of peanut butter you take out and don't buy won't even register upstairs.
The only voice they understand up there is that of your money. The best way to tell them how you feel about their policy is simply to not buy your stuff there. The second best is to at least avoid the peanut butter. And, and that's important, too, spread the word!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
While we're at it, why don't we donate our damaged or defective food products to a local food bank (only if we don't want it ourselves because of potential poisoning issues, and only after a small random sample shows only quality related issues). Hey, I'm not going to eat it because it isn't good enough for me, but it's good enough to give to charity, after all.
Sorry Costco, just another reason I don't shop with you.
Retired old geezer in Michigan who is tired of the snow and cold!
Hog won't eat it, he hates everything.
He likes it! Hey Hoggy!
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
this "does not matter". it is sad, yes, but it does not matter. there are many worse things that happen every day. I do not visit slashdot for this kind of news. Samzenpus -- **you suck**. Thanks for wasting my time.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
I'm thinking that was the entire point. The first two sentences are the AC's offering of a possible reason why Costco may have decided to do what they did. The third sentence highlights why that reasoning is stupid.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
In just a moderate sized lawsuit against the company the coffee expesnes for the sock-it-to-the-corporation jury award would cost more than all of those costs alone.
Its simpler to destroy the stuff than to take the risk in todays world of worse-than-useless add-nothing extortive legal middlemen.
Spread it around in Jellystone National Park.
rewriting history since 2109
The issue here isn't that CostCo is being numb, the issue is that people can sue CostCo if they claim to be sick from the peanut butter. Even if the food bank gives it away, and the person that gets it gives it away, the chain is still there, and CostCo is still in the sights of a plaintiff as a target for a suit.
This is pretty much why railroads will shred brand new cars if they were in a derailment. It's easier accounting to pay the manufacturer for the car than to risk 100,000 or more in liability because the car "might have been" damaged in the derailment leading to the suit. Hmmm. $40K for the car an know that's the end of it, or risk potentially $100K+ payouts for decades after from someone that might not even be born yet? It's simple math.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
I hope they also kill the top 1% morons. You won't be missed.
Maybe those employees will do themselves a favor and quit. Costco's always boasting about how well-off their employees are compared to Wal-Mart, so I'm not crying over those pampered whiners.
Like the time in jail when the guy offered me his dinner because he didn't want it. Oh noes! Lawsuit!
That is an intended effect of the boycott though.
The workers, by choosing to work for Costco, are effectively enabling the management to make the decisions they do. If enough staff complain, the problem *will* financially impact Costco, either through productivity dropping amongst their staff or staff leaving.
Of course, the question is how Costco staff will get blamed for being lazy before management realise it's not something the staff are in control of... but, working for a corrupt (! not my belief! Just paraphrasing other opinions :) ) company should have some downsides for the employees. Otherwise there is no incentive to ensure the company employing you is doing the right thing by society.
The article notes that the trucks drove by the food bank on the way to the dump.
It is less direct than just avoiding the store all together, but can still be effective form of protest. If you know you'll get abuse for working for Costco, you'll either demand more money, or not even apply in the first place. So Costco will either need to change their reputation, or offer more money. I sympathise that this is VERY stressful on a personal level for the individual workers, but would force Costco to change in the long run.
You don't have to eat it. But give others a choice?
First offense no second chance.
Simple. Donate it to the food bank and the volunteers throw out the damaged containers when they are getting the containers out of the cartons.
The rest is justification for the risk averse to not have the balls to do the right thing.
Back in the day (1980s), I helped run an emergency food pantry in Southern California. At the time, Sol Price (founder of Price Club, which I believe is one of the constituent chains that merged to become CostCo) donated pallets of dried milk to us to redistribute. In general, these were pallets where there had been damage, so some of the packages were not usable - the vast majority of the packages, however, were fine.
At our pantry, that donation made up a substantial part of what we gave out to people, especially those with children.
I always thought it was both generous and great business sense for them to donate that food. After all, Price Club got a tax write off, there was less waste, and the hungry people got food without it impacting Price Club's sales.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
So how would you go about turning a large number of blankets into smallpox infected blankets given only a small number of smallpox patients? How do you do it without those with the responsibility of caring for those smallpox patients complaining to your superiors or the local Church (which was a pretty damn powerful social force in those times)?
I can't see it happening in large numbers. Apply some thought and see if you can find way to turn that wish of Amherst etc into a widespread reality.
Where you have a lot of salt and oil many things will last for years so long as you keep the lid on, as seen by the date on some recently packaged containers. Also in this case we are talking about a product that can last for three months or more at room temperature after opening.
If it hasn't been stored in the tropics you could add even a few more years for the sealed containers. Soldiers are given six year old peanut butter which hasn't been refridgerated and there has been no special need for a different military ration grade - it's the same stuff as in the shops.
^^ As Subject... this is despicable and utterly wasteful, we should all be ashamed, yes all of us - we all here have a hand in this no matter how small or fleeting. A badjillion peanuts get harvested to produce some million jars of peanut concentrate (call it butter if you like). Some QA chain breaks down and the jars aren't quite sealed right allowing some nutty oil to escape, in no way affecting the content of the jar. Reaction - scrap the lot, put it in landfill. Where the hell did common sense go, wait what..... oh common sense was terminated some time back in favour of lawyers. This is regulation and legislation gone way beyond its remit. Time to take the power back.
No doubt Dan-O.
I can understand why they simply don't want to be associated with the listeria outbreak factory. It boggles my mind that ANY ONE here wants to push the issue.
I can't understand why they want to dump this organic material in a landfill with other random trash.
Even if it's unfit for human consumption --- it can still be used as an energy source or fertilizer, due to the valuable raw nutrients contained in peanuts.
I realize that Corporate America is unconcerned with what is right or correct, but carbonaceous material such as this should be recycled into the biosphere. Sanitary landfills are a terrible waste of space, and we should have composted this to replenish the topsoil.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Donate it to science:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Table-ized A.I.
Two? The defence rests.
Costco will not be affected by it, you'll just be inconveniencing and aggravating the staff who will have to restock them.
So, Costco will be affected by it, then. Corporate pays the salaries and wages of the inconvenienced aggravated staff who would presumably otherwise be doing more profitable things. Win. In the grand scheme of things, a small victory indeed, but a measurable win nonetheless.
It seems nobody has seen what putrid stuff food banks have to sift through. Some companies will "donate" anything they can't sell, like leaking cans and food with obvious mold. The food banks can't do anything with it either, but they are routinely dealing with potentially substandard food products.
I assumed the story would be something related to federal peanut farm subsidies that have remained ever since the peanut crisis when Carter was in office. Between diversion of food to energy products and $500 million paid annually to farmers to NOT grow peanuts, the government is the more common reason for any shortages.
vi? Who's that?
Be it future generations on archeological digs or some other entity examing our time, doubtless the future will see this as one of the dark ages. The waste alone is shamefull. I understand Costco's move, if they are worried about litigation, but wasted food always makes me feel bad. I wish there was a better way to dispose of this, or perhaps avoid disposal altogether. If we had more local businesses, food producers, and farms--then perhaps mega-food production would not be needed. The place I go to for peanut butter, crushes the penuts in a machine right in front of me. About as fresh as it gets with no added salts, oils or preservatives. An independnt shop run by an old lady that sells dried foods, nuts, olives, spices, and such. No waste in this sort of place. We need more of this and less of Costco.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
Other /.ers have covered the issues around the peanut butter well enough. What no one has mentioned is the continued idiocy of landfills in the US. Why doesn't the US incinerate? You get energy out of the trash, destroy poisonous chemicals, recover the metals, and at the end you have a much smaller volume of waste that needs to be disposed of.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Isn't dumping so much of an edible in one location just eventually going to attract a large vermin population?
NO, an inconvenience to their staff is an inconvenience to COSTCO.
Such an exercise would affect the welfare of every smallpox infected soldier and civilian that could be found so it would come to the attention of the church that those soldiers and civilians belong to.
I also wonder if there were even enough smallpox victims available for such a large scale effort as is suggested to be anything other than fantasy. It's far more likely that person to person casual contact or proximity resulted in the epidemic as happened in other places where there is no suggestion of deliberate infection. Nobody deliberately attempted to spread Spanish 'flu but it spread through some populations at a rate far higher than the smallpox epidemic we are discussing is thought to have progressed.
A complete bastard may have wanted to infect people with a few thousand blankets but I suspect contact with traders probably did the job for him.
If you think this doesn't affect management, you're nuts. The peons have a choice who they work for, and their pain is (eventually) felt by management. Make their lives hell and they'll either quit or bitch enough that it becomes a PR issue, and the company will have to respond. A token response is better than nothing at all. Get full carts of their peanut butter and leave them at the checkout aisles.
Well, could it be that those "pampered whiners" get to work more for the increased pay? We have a huge chain 'round here as well that boasts just how their average worker gets payment on par with assistant managers in other chains, but when you look at just WHAT kind of work these people have to do for that money you can't help but agree that it's very justified.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, somehow I kinda doubt that working for Costco is a career choice where you really have a lot of option if you don't really like it there...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If i bought something from costco, i would make it a habbit of taking peanut butter and at the register, tell them i don't want it.
Then sell it as livestock feed. Pigs eat far worse than peanut butter. Boil it up along with the rest of the slops to kill off any salmonella, and it'll be perfectly safe (if disgusting, from a human point of view).
Still a waste of perfectly good human food, but at least it's better than burying it with the trash.
I only heard about this in Slasdot, and I don't give a shit. If I'd heard that a company were selling food which killed people, and their defence was "oh, we heard it was poisonous so we stopped selling it for a bit, and instead gave it away to poor people" I'd never buy anything from them again.
to mother Earth 3
Costco isn't the only job filling the niche of low-skilled employment though. Why work at Costco vs. other employers (e.g., Walmart, other major department store chains, fast food joints etc.)?
These people are paid by the company, and as such, directly benefit from the choices the company makes. I do grant the Costco employees don't have a lot of choice, but, limited options doesn't automatically grant these people immunity from backlash as a result of the company's actions.
Out of curiosity, why is it worse that I have to restock peanut butter jars vs. whatever other task the employee has to do? Does it affect their pay directly somehow?
How about just not buying anything from Costco and move to Walmart or your local Co-Op or whatever.
The people at the top will not hear a thing about a minor inconvenience to a small number of their staff right at the bottom unless they are on reality TV show.
Just waiting for someone to spot an Anaphalctic Shock cluster around the land fill :)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
I don't know why the jars have to be thrown away in a landfill and not recycled. You could transform it in soap, for instance, and glass or iron jars could be easily recycled. Or if the transformation in soap isn't feasible you could also do the old fashioned way: mix it with manure, or throw in a sewer processing facilty. Actually is the same thing, because the organic sewer waste on some plant is dried and sold as fertilizer.
fuck beta
Who cares if the product was "extensively tested"? Sampling and testing of food products is intended to work where the plant is practicing all the right food safety practices. Testing is just further verification. This plant was a horrifying filth pit. Testing is not intended to, and cannot, ensure that your jar of peanut butter happened to emerge unscathed from an utterly disgusting facility.
I'm glad that Costco thinks that poor people don't deserve to eat food that might be contaminated with rat droppings.
Penny - plain text accounting
I was all ready to say, "What a great idea!", until I re-read the words "boil it up". That means doing something active, which has a cost (aside from the work of getting the stuff out of the jars it's already in). Once again, we come to cold hard cash vs. risk.
I had a pair of those leaking cream peanutbutters a month or two back.
Hope it was the clean and not contaminated batch :)
I'm sure there are some power plants that could use peanut butter alongside their regular fuel. Its caloric value is about 7 kWh/kg.
That is stupid....that all those jar have to endup in a land fill. but it is because if they do donate it, and someone gets sick, Costco gets sued.
Not worth it to take that chance.
25 tons is about what you would be able to fit into a single semi-tractor trailer, if that helps anyone visualize how much peanut butter we are talking about. One truck. Not a world changing volume of peanut butter we are talking about here.
I am not surprised that Costco is making missteps after James Sinegal departure, much like Sam's Club/Wal-Mart has been hampered by management mistakes after Sam Walton died.
Both men were visionaries and did things that the average MBA CxO thinks are mistakes but actually helped their respective companies in the long term. In the Walton run stores (Wal-Mart/Sam's Club) it was the "mistake" Sam Walton made, according to the Walton kids, was not stocking his stores with everything "Made in China" humanly possible (Sam Walton wanted cheap Made in America products when possible) and his refusal to jump with both feet into the political contribution arena, funding every single low tax, ultra conservative politician possible. Both decisions turned out to be major long-term mistakes by the Walton kids which cannot be undone. In the first case it contributed to higher unemployment numbers and stymied the recovery and the second caused the Federal and State governments to cut assistance programs to the poor, both of which hurt Wal-Mart's per store sales.
Two blankets and a handkerchief? Sounds experimental, more than anything else.
If they wanted to inundate the native in smallpox, they would have come up with hundreds of blankets or simply dumped a corpse in the water supply.
The biggest historical fact refuting this nonsense is that smallpox spread from the European settlers to the Amerinds without any deliberate attempts, and probably wiped out 90% of them.
The great European genocide of Amerinds myth is just that, a myth. I hadn't heard the high carrot diet one however. Too bad it's a myth, as I like carrots.
Futurist Traditionalism
The Emerson Good Samaritan Act is an affirmative defense against Gross Negligence in the court meaning that anyone can sue Costco for taking the peanut butter and Costco must then prove to the court they fall under this protection. Costco is then presumed guilty until proven innocent. The act is not written that way but that is how it turns out to protect Costco, but not after paying substantial legal fees they will have trouble recouping.
Better to have the peanut butter buried than deal with the likelihood of wacky lawsuits, even lawsuits Costco can easily win.
How's this headline look to you: Thousands Sickened by Contaminated Peanut Butter that COSTCO Dumped on Poor
ET likes Reeses Pieces, not potentially salmonella-ridden rancid old peanut butter!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
One person gets sick and dies, there goes your "worth $2.6 million".
Not five articles away, slashdotters are bitching over GM making a decision to risk lives for profit. Here, they bitch about not risking it. Or not risking money to help poor, or some damned thing.
Where's that pill Stan took last night? I need it when browsing slashdot.
The half-size one. No, wait. The full one.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I have no data, but I am certain that anyone who's upset about this is terms of waste and hunger should probably consider the likely (tens, hundreds, more?) millions of dollars worth of wasted food sent to Africa and hoarded by gangs and left to rot in warehouses as people starve. I bet the peanut butter is orders of magnitude less significant.
And it is pretty much guaranteed hat someone is going to get one of these jars and suddenly develop some tummy ache and report directly to the lawyers.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Tort reform is code for something else entirely. In the United States the ONLY way to enforce civil law is through the courts. There are no police that enforce civil laws. A citizen's only means of redress is the courts. Tort reform is about taking away the citizen's only means of seeking redress from large corporations and wealthy individuals for harm they cause, or limiting the economic liability to such a degree that the penalties for violating the law have no deterrent effect.
Businesses are afraid of lawsuits, and that's a good thing. That's called deterrent. That's how it's supposed to work. If you don't think a business should be responsible for X, get the laws making them liable changed instead of obliterating the only mechanism available for enforcing civil law.
All of us pay, in one degree or another depending on how socialized the medical and employment legislation is where you live. If even 1% of those jars led to illness and that illness involved pharmaceuticals, doctor or ER visits, and absent time at work, that impacts taxpayers and society on a broader scale (as well as those providing health insurance). Yes, that isn't a cost that Costco would pay, but you can certainly not say there is no risk to this donation and no financial consequences.
Besides, I think you will find that a fair portion of this peanut butter order may be staledated or imminently so. There are known instances of oil leakage casting question on EACH and EVERY jar.
It does seem sad, but Costco is acting both in its own interest from a liability perspective and perhaps in a broader public interest (in terms of not risking anyone getting contaminated, rancid food and incurring health care costs and potential absenteeism economic impacts). I assume Costco is acting primarily for the former reason, but the other shouldn't be overlooked.
Situations are rarely as simple as bumper sticker thought....
"Curry County landfill employee Tim Stacy says that no one will be able to consume the peanut butter once it's dumped because it will be immediately rolled over with a bulldozer, destroying the supply. Stacy added more trash will then be dumped on top of the pile."
Then we'll all piss on it. Then we'll do a little dance on it and bring in some hungry families. We'll rub the kids faces in the filthy peanut butter and then laugh at them. THEN we'll be done with it.
Go ahead, it's right in the landfill. Just dig it up and make some yummy sandwiches. We'll be here, waiting, and watching for results. It's probably expired by now anyway, and peanut butter can be a tricky thing to make without letting bacteria, but don't let that scare you. Maybe you can get a good deal on those puffy cans at the supermarket, too.
Some people think seems a waste, but me, I don't much like throwing up. Remember: salmonella, you come out of one end; E. coli you come out of both ends. Bring something for electrolytes like Gatorade or Pedialyte.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Costco is screwed no matter which option they choose here. If they had donated the peanut butter, the headlines would have been "Costco donates potentially tainted peanut butter to NM food banks." Either way, they end up with a tarnished image, even if all of the peanut butter is untainted.
In this case it sounds like the product was damaged anyway, with peanut oil leaking out of the jars, so they made a decision not to sell or donate damaged merchandise. Since they were screwed either way, this was likely the least damaging of the two options.
/. zen: Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Beowulf clusters...
The address bar in my browser says slashdot.org, but I could swear I'm currently reading Huffpo. WTF is this story doing here?
sig: sauer
Maybe those employees will do themselves a favor and quit. Costco's always boasting about how well-off their employees are compared to Wal-Mart, so I'm not crying over those pampered whiners.
Right, because having no income with which to pay for rent and groceries is the best way to support someone else's protest.
Hiring manager: So, why did you leave CostCo?
Applicant: It pissed me off that they destroyed peanut butter instead of donating it to the poor, so I was really doing myself a favor. I won't work for a company that engages in practices I disapprove of.
Hiring manager: Next!
that it's an infections disease, don't you?
> 950,000 jars – or about 25 tons
1 million, one pound jars would be 500 tons.
A one pound jar isn't very big and these guy's aren't exactly know for selling things in Airline sized containers.
Since this is patently false - lawsuits per capita by private citizens are trending down, awards in such lawsuits are trending down, etc. etc. etc. for decades now - why do the Big Businesses that own Congress spend so much time trying to sell this meme to us?
Oh, wait, "tort reform" means "laws to prevent giant corporations for paying for damages they knowingly inflicted". Now I understand!
Isn't it time to admit that there is no real scarcity of food, and cutting food stamps has nothing to do with economics but with pure cruelty?
Isn't it time to admit your reading comprehension is low and this story has nothing to do with cutting food stamps?
I wouldn't exactly call peanut butter part of a "well rounded diet"....
If 950000 jars weigh a total of 25 tonnes, then each jar weighs only 26 grammes. Something doesn't add up here.
When the jars are dumped, they become "ownerless". They could be carefully deposited at the landfill then claimed by a charity group and transported away without breaking a single jar.
Irregardless of whatever reason is used to not give the peanut butter to poor hungry people is wrong. Yes I realize how bad our "sue everyone" society is. And that is wrong as well. I realize they want to sell, not give food away. I assure you I realize all the reasonable reasons involved. BUT the bottom line is it is always wrong to destroy good food that people who can't afford to buy it, people that are hungry and need it. We have the technology to feed every human on this planet and for companies to still make a profit. Literally. There is no reason for any child to go to bed hungry in any country. Oh wait there is one. Greed.
I'm old, not dead. Well that's my 2 cents worth, your mileage may vary. I say what I think, not what you want to hear.
They are refusing the shipment in fear that the food is contaminated. You can't give contaminated food to a food bank. Why is this even an issue?
950,000 plastic jars of peanut butter sounds impressive. So does 25 tons of peanut butter. But using the density of peanut butter (USDA says 258 grams/cup) this turns out to be 734.5 cubic feet of peanut butter. That turns out to be enough peanuts to fill ONE 20 foot long freight container about 5 feet deep. In the US a 20 ft container is rated for 37,000 lbs and not the 50,000 lbs we have, so it would take two shipping containers to haul it off to the dump. Once again, a reporter has made something sound impressive by using numbers that make the reality sound much more impressive than it really is. Since the larger landfills in the United States handle between 6,000 and 8,000 tons of garbage per day, this load of nuts is less than 1% of the garbage going to a large landfill on any given day. I am not impressed.
Where's that pill Stan took last night?
My guess is somewhere between Stan's stomach and downstream of the body of water that receives effluent from Stan's municipal waste treatment facility.
I need it when browsing slashdot.
That pill has probably lost its efficacy, and it's likely unappealing in both appearance and odor. If I were you, I'd ask Stan where he got the pill, and try to score a new one from Stan or his supplier.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Agreed. Or maybe not pure cruelty, maybe stupidity is part of the mix.
But I also have to agree that your post is offtopic because Costco does not accept food stamps.
It increases the workload. They don't restock those jars instead of doing their other work, they have to do it additionally.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Which makes sense if the employees are goal-oriented rather than time-oriented. However, there are legal limits to how much overtime the employer can force their workers to do. Basically, this form of protest works if the employees don't let themselves get abused by their company.
If, on the other hand, the employees simply take up all the slack, then of course this type of protest is ineffective. But... why would you work for a company that treats you this way? That is the question the employee should be asking themselves as a direct result of the peanut-butter protest. In principle, either the employee is getting paid enough to continue to perform the work, or they aren't, and will leave to find a better job.
I'm still interested in a rebuttal as to why the employees should be insulated from the choices made by management though, as I think that is the more compelling argument on why the proposed protest is effective & even desirable.
Please don't do this Costco will not be affected by it, you'll just be inconveniencing and aggravating the staff who will have to restock them.
Not to mention that Costco is one of the few grocery companies that don't treat their employees like replaceable dirt, and they pay them a fair wage too.
I worked for a "Premium" grocery store, and they had me on "chinese overtime" such that it was virtually impossible for me to make $320 a week because with added overtime, the pay decreased per hour. Naturally, they scheduled me for 60 hours a week, which was nearly equivalent to 47 hours of pay (without time-and-a-half).
From your qutoed law
A person or gleaner shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability arising from the nature, age, packaging, or condition of apparently wholesome food or an apparently fit grocery product that the person or gleaner donates in good faith to a nonprofit organization for ultimate distribution to needy individuals.
Costco doesn't want to sell the food because they feel it doesn't meet their standards for "apparently wholesome food". Since they won't opt to sell it for fear of contamination, it is certainly not "an apparently fit grocery product".
Exactly which part of this law indemnifies them? The law doesn't state you can donate contaminated food, it states that as long as the food is apparently wholesome, the nature of the food, it's age, it's packaging, or it's condition can't be used as grounds for a lawsuit.
I used to have relatives who owned a pig farm. Boiling the slops was a standard part of their routine.
They actually used to have arrangements with all of the local pubs and restaurants, which every day would collect all of the plate scrapings, left overs and kitchen offcuts into slop buckets. Every morning my uncle would go around collecting the slop buckets and take them back to the farm, where they would all be emptied into a big vat and boiled for a number of hours. The end result would be a mushy stuff with the texture and smell of vomit, but which would be sterile of any nasties that could harm the pigs. The pigs loved the stuff. Filthy buggers.
Chucking a few jars of peanut putter into the mix every day would have been easy enough.
Of course that wouldn't even be strictly necessary, seeing as the manufacturer of the peanut butter seems to be swearing blind that the product is uncontaminated and fit for human consumption. If the farmer were happy with this, they could go nuts and just feed it straight to the pigs.
Because the job market is not one where many people can afford to flip their boss off if he starts with unreasonable demands. Especially in the low wage sectors. There is very little the worker himself can do to stand up against something like that. Don't like it? Hit the road, and don't think you'll find employment anytime soon again when word gets out that you're a complainer!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"who knows what organisms have made the jar their home"
None. Peanut butter doesn't go bad. High fat and oil content, low moisture means its naturally long lasting. All that happens is the fatty oils may go rancid from oxidation after a year; if it stays vacuum sealed longer than that.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
We're talking about food here - and about people who probably can't afford to be too discriminating about the quality of their food if they intend to eat. Never mind the lawsuits - if a food item isn't fit for my table, I can't conceive an ethical argument for putting it on someone else's table. Better I leave the poor to find wholesome food than to trick them into thinking they have already found it.
This, of course, is an ethical argument. Wholly subjective, I'm afraid. What's your ethical take on knowingly giving compromised food to charity?