Some of you have probably heard about this Salmonella outbreak that was linked to peanut butter. In short, if you have a jar of Peter Pan Peanut Butter with a stamped code (on the lid) starting with the number “2111″ you should throw it away. I suspect that they’ll implicate the packaging in the end because Salmonella doesn’t survive too well in peanut butter (not enough water.) The jars or lids probably got contaminated by some filthy slob shedding Salmonella.

I work in a facility that conducts microbiological research projects for the government and for industry. The other scientists and I looked in our office pantry this morning (it was recently restocked) and found that we have one of the implicated jars of peanut butter! It’s half-eaten but nobody got sick. We might test it for Salmonella but it’s Friday and we’re all lazy so we probably won’t.

This isn’t the first time our office has had a brush with food poisoning. Two years ago we had a Christmas party during the day and three fourths of the staff came down with some kind of viral food poisoning (probably norovirus) from the catering. I didn’t get sick because I have a stomach like a garbage incinerator.