Help your grocery store help you!

Do you have a frequent shopper or customer loyalty card from your regular grocery store? Would you like the store to alert you if purchased food that is part of a recall?

The South Carolina legislature is currently considering a bill that would require grocery stores to notify customers who purchase products that are later recalled. Stores would be required to contact their customers within 10 days of the recall alert.

In the current peanut butter Salmonella outbreak, over 2,100 products have already been recalled. How is a customer supposed to keep up with this list? Retailers should help consumers find dangerous products and dispose of them- or return them for a refund.

Some retailers are voluntarily alerting customers, but many more are not. We congratulate the sponsors of H.3524 for taking a step to protect consumers from dangerous food, and urge Representative Howard Leon, Chairman of the Committee on Medical, Military, Public and Municipal Affairs to grant a hearing on this important legislation.

Contact Chairman Leon today and encourage him to call a hearing on this important public health issue!

Tell me more

Subject:

Dear [ Decision Maker ],

(Edit Letter Below)

As a South Carolina resident, I strongly support H.3524, a bill that would require grocery stores to contact consumers to notify them if they have purchased a recalled product.  I hope that as the Chair of the Committee on Medical, Military, Public and Municipal Affairs, you will grant this important public health bill a hearing in the near future.

Consumers in South Carolina and around the country have been inundated with news of dangerous food.  The latest recall, of peanut products tainted with Salmonella, is the largest in FDA's history and demonstrates exactly why this kind of action is necessary.  With over 2,100 products already recalled, consumers are having a very difficult time assessing whether they have any of the implicated food in their homes.

Tainted peanut products have a long shelf-life and may lurk in cabinets for months undetected, and many of the products are popular snack foods, particularly for children.  Consumers may not remember whether they purchased one of the thousands of implicated products- and they need their retailer to tell them.  A phone call or letter from a retailer, specifying what product was purchased and the date of the purchase, would help consumers find dangerous products and dispose of them- or return them for a refund.

One large retailer voluntarily contacted over 1.5 million consumers to warn them that they had purchased potentially contaminated peanut products.  That's 1.5 million Americans who could have eaten those products and become infected with deadly Salmonella.  Unfortunately, many more retailers are sitting on this valuable purchasing information, rather than using it to protect their customers.

In passing this bill, South Carolina would truly be putting consumer safety first.  Requiring grocery stores to use their extensive customer databases for public health- and not just for coupons- would help to get dangerous products out of consumers' homes, and out of their families' mouths.

Please let me know when you will hold a hearing for H.3524.

Sincerely,
[Your name]
[Your address]

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