By Katie Perkowski

After last week’s peanut product recall that was issued, it has been determined that all of UK’s food products are safe, said the director of UK Dining Services.

Director Scott Henry said all of the vendors that UK Dining Services works with are proactive when a recall is announced, and each will contact UK directly about the safety of affected items.

“When a recall is announced, we immediately pull all products that may be affected from all dining units — in this case, peanut butter crackers, bulk peanut butter, peanut butter cookies, peanut butter yogurt, etc. — and contact each vendor who provides these products to us to inquire as to the safety of the items,” Henry said in an e-mail to the Kernel.

Henry said in a case where a vendor had a product that was affected by a recall, then that product would not be shipped to UK Dining Services.

“The biggest source of peanut butter and products containing peanut butter is Gordon Food Service,” he said. “They ship products to us from a variety of manufacturers and assure us that the products that we serve that have peanut butter in them are safe.”

Tim McGurk, manager of Public Affairs for the Louisville division of Kroger, said the company has not received any reports of illness related to anything purchased from them in the Lexington area.

“With that said, there have probably been 50 or more items recalled from our stores,” he said. “We’ve removed all those from the shelf.”

According to Kroger’s Web site, products that were recalled that are sold in Lexington include: Premier Titan Chocolate Peanut Crunch Bars, Supreme Protein Peanut Butter Crunch Bars, Clif Mojo Peanut Butter Pretzel Bar Singles and Think Thin Chocolate Mudslide Bars.

PetSmart also had to remove products from its shelf. According to its Web site, it voluntarily recalled seven of its Grreat Choice Dog Biscuit products. PetSmart is not aware of any reported cases of illness related to these products.

Also according to the Kroger Web site, Kroger-brand products are not part of the investigation and are safe to consume.

McGurk said as soon as the Food and Drug Administration makes Kroger aware of a product recall, especially one as serious as the salmonella outbreak, Kroger immediately notifies its store teams and they take the product off the shelf and put the products in a locked location.

“Specific to this recall and others, we follow the guidance of the Food and Drug Administration,” McGurk said.

“We also put what we call a block on that particular product’s UPC code,” McGurk said. He said this means if one of the products is placed in an incorrect location in the store and a customer tries to buy it, the system would notify the cashier that that product is not safe to buy.

McGurk said the average Kroger store has over 20,000 items in it and recalls are not frequent. He said Kroger gets a very minute number of recalls every year.

Henry said that he has not noticed people eating fewer products with peanut ingredients at UK dining places, but said, “We have had students ask about the safety of items they see containing peanut butter and we explain that the products are safe.”