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Salmonella-Spiked Turkey

In an attempt to re-acclimate myself with the regular grind (as my switch is stubbornly stuck on Vacation Mode), I ventured to the grocery store yesterday for milk.

The drive to the nearest store is literally 3-1/2 minutes from my house, which is why I try not to shop there. At any time in the store's 24-hour day I am sure to bump into at least two neighbors; and during peak hours, I find myself leaning on my cart five to eight times and chatting up an extra hour or so that I hadn't allotted to errand-running. Time management is NOT my friend, to start with. So I often shop in a food store farther from my house.

However, since yesterday was just an excuse to get out of the house, I went to my neighborhood Kroger. At the register, I was surprised when the cashier handed me a receipt for milk that was long enough to categorize a week's worth of groceries. She explained the extra type dealt with the ground turkey recall.

Since I use my Kroger card when I shop in the store, the computer was able to spit out all the dates and UPC codes when I bought now-recalled ground turkey. I learned that since February 20, I bought fourteen packages of potentially tainted turkey. I guess I shop at Kroger more often than I realized.

I searched my freezers but found none of this turkey, which means we ate all of it. That's a lot of bullets to dodge.

But here's the thing I'm most struck by: The recalled turkey came from one processing center. "On August 3, Cargill recalled 36 million pounds of fresh and frozen ground turkey products produced at the company’s Springdale, Ark., facility from Feb. 20, 2011, through Aug. 2, 2011, due to possible contamination with Salmonella Heidelberg." (Source  ) That same turkey has been sold under the following brands:

Honeysuckle White
Giant Eagle
Aldi’s Fit & Active
Fresh HEB
Riverside
Kroger
Safeway
Shady Brook Farms
Spartan
Natural Lean
Bulk packed ground turkey

So I realized that when I pay $1.50-2.50 more per pound for Honeysuckle or Shady Brook Farms turkey, I'm getting the exact same product as if I spent less money on the store brand.

Friends, I've helped fund those company's marketing campaigns for the last time. Lesson learned!

Happy Friday!