Cereal replaced peanut butter and toast for freshman Kyle Paya when he discovered his big jar of Peter Pan could have been contaminated with salmonella.
"When I went back home this weekend, I looked at the jar," he said. "I had already made the toast. I saw the number and thought about if I wanted to risk it and decided nope."
Ball State University removed all jars with product codes beginning with 2111 from Dining shelves Thursday after ConAgra Foods issued a recall for Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter purchased since May 2006, Director of Dining Jon Lewis said. Ball State stocks the Peter Pan brand.
The recall includes Great Value peanut butter with the suspect product code and all Peter Pan peanut butter, according to The U.S. Food and Drug Administration Web site. The Great Value jars were made in the same plant as Peter Pan, according to the Web site.
"I'm going to buy Skippy now, screw Peter Pan," Paya said.
While Paya said he buys his peanut butter at Walmart because Ball State charges too much for it, other students may have purchased the contaminated peanut butter from Dining. All students should check the product code on the bottom of the lid, Lewis said.
"This is no different from the rest of the Muncie community and Indiana," he said. "Just like everyone else, we had Peter Pan peanut butter we had to pull."
Nationwide, 290 people in 39 states have become sick with Salmonella Tennessee, the type of bacteria in the peanut butter, according to the FDA. In Indiana, 13 people have tested positive for the bacteria.
The possibly contaminated jars could have been on Ball State shelves since summer, Lewis said.
If the jar is one of the ones that could be carrying salmonella, students can return it to Dining and receive a coupon for food, he said. For a full refund, they should send the lid to ConAgra Foods.
No Ball State students treated at Ball State or Ball Memorial Hospital have tested positive for salmonella, Kent Bullis, medical director at the Amelia T. Wood Health Center, said. Health Center staff has been keeping an eye out for problems though, he said.
"Anytime we hear of something like that we tend to perk up and pay attention to those things," Bullis said.
Symptoms include diarrhea with abdominal cramps, diarrhea lasting for more than 24 hours or continued diarrhea despite not eating recently, he said. Students experiencing these should see a physician. People who have had these symptoms but no longer do probably should not be concerned, Bullis said.
Salmonella bacteria can live inside people's intestines and never cause a problem, he said. The bacteria usually are only an issue when they are eaten.
Freshman Mallory Soliven said she ate Peter Pan peanut butter purchased earlier in the semester from Ball State.
"If that's the reason I've been getting sick, I'm going to kill that peanut butter," she said. "The last time I got sick I ate it."
The jar she was eating out of belonged to freshman Jim Harris, who said he was going to go home and check the product code. Regardless of whether it was one of the jars that could be carrying salmonella, he said he would probably throw it out.
"It's older, so I will probably pitch it," he said. "I love peanut butter, so that's sad."
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