Lincoln County’s students and grocery shoppers appear to be safefrom a salmonella outbreak affecting much of the country after aparticular brand of peanut butter and its derivatives were found tobe contaminated last week.

None of Brookhaven’s three major grocery stores carry thetainted peanut butter, produced by Georgia-based Peanut Corp. ofAmerica, and certain snacks produced by brands like Kellogg, LittleDebbie and Famous Amos that may contain contaminated ingredientsfrom the company have been pulled from shelves, officials said.

Neither the Lincoln County School District or Brookhaven Academyhave found any of the products listed for recall by the Food andDrug Administration, either. Brookhaven School District officialscould not be reached for comment.

The FDA issued the recall on the peanut butter last week andexpanded it Monday to include the snack items after more than 450people nationwide and in Canada became sick.

Wal-Mart Spokeswoman Ashley Hardie said the tainted peanutbutter is an institutional brand distributed to medical facilities,schools and other organizations and is not sold in retail stores.The sub-products using contaminated peanut butter paste have beenpulled from Wal-Mart shelves, she said.

“There are a number of national brand products – cookies,crackers and ice cream – that have been recalled,” Hardie said. “Wehave notified our stores to pull those from their shelves.”

Piggly Wiggly Manager Bruce Garrett said his store also does notcarry the brand, and he has followed FDA protocol and removed someKellogg and Keebler products. He said the warnings for the snackbrands was likely just precautionary.

“We are clean, we pulled it (Sunday),” he said. “Anyone whobought [those products] before, just return it.”

King’s Daughters Medical Center has no affected items to pullfrom its menus. Hospital dietician Jeaneen Stewart said herfacility uses none of the food items on national recall lists.

“We just had a temporary hold on some peanut butter crackeritems, but we did not even have those, anyway,” she said.

Lincoln County School District Superintendent Terry Brister saidhis cafeteria managers began checking their supplies Friday andhave found none of the items listed for recall. He said furthershipments to the schools’ cafeterias would be checked thoroughly aswell.

“We don’t even have it,” he said.

Brookhaven Academy Cafeteria Manager Tawana Nettles, meanwhile,said her school doesn’t carry those kinds of snacks. The academy’ssnack machines are filled with health snacks, she said, and U.S.Foodservice – from which the school purchases all its food – hasissued no recalls.

“We should be clean all the way around,” she said. “Mydistributors assure me we don’t have anything coming from thatcompany.”