Peanut butter: two words that used to conjure childhood memories of sandwiches with jelly and delicious cookies and treats, now only leave a bad taste in my mouth as I think about recent events. Throughout the past three years there have been a few tales of tainted peanut butter and two peanut product recalls, a misfortune that has landed many people in the hospital with salmonella poisoning. Most recently the number of people affected by the contaminated product has reached 550 according to The New York Times; this number doesn’t include the eight people that have died from the poisoning.

I loved peanut butter as a child; I would run into the kitchen and, grabbing a spoon, get as much delicious crunchy JIF on it as possible and then carry it around for hours just licking the peanut butter away. Little did I know that as I slurped up my favorite food I was risking my health by eating hairs and bugs.

According to associatedcontent.com, every pound of peanut butter has up to five rodent hairs and 150 bits of bugs. Really? This is something that we ingest every day, unaware of the danger lurking under the colorful lid.

Most recently a peanut plant in Georgia sent out a batch of peanut products before receiving the results of the contamination test. Not surprisingly, the products had been contaminated.

The plant manager has been quoted as responding to the news with a simple “Uh-oh.” I feel like I would have a little more to say about that mistake, maybe even something involving a string of profanities.

This same plant has been cited for health code violations since 2006.

There has been grease residue and dirt buildup in the factory, along with areas rusting and flaking into the food. The rust is not where it ends: there are gaps in the walls wide enough for rodents to crawl in and there were buckets of peanut butter left uncovered overnight.

The fact that our peanut butter is made in factories like this one should give rise to suspicion that this delectable snack is more trouble than it’s worth.

Fortunately for those peanut butter lovers out there, this plant has been shut down, but it is disturbing to think that we may have purchased peanut butter that traveled from the disturbingly unsanitary factory in Blakely, Ga.

The recent outbreak of contamination has brought to light the poor quality of production that peanuts and other related products go through. The Georgia plant isn’t the only one that has been documented for its conditions.

In interviews with The New York Times, employees of a Texas plant complained about the lack of care in production there as well, which begs the question of just how many factories are violating the health code every day.

The one comforting thought in this whole situation is the fact that the FDA has promised to re-evaluate the standards of production to give restitution to the families of those affected. Believe me; I would not eat peanut butter ever again if the FDA didn’t begin changing something.

Hopefully it will be safe to go out and buy some good old-fashioned Peter Pan peanut butter soon, but I know I am going to lay off the stuff for a while. I can find a new delectable treat that goes just as well with jelly.