Please PLEASE use caution when purchasing Justin’s Almond Butter!!

The tiny daughter of a friend is in the hospital today because of an accident that could easily happen again! We want to make sure this same story doesn’t happen to someone else’s family- and so we are asking you to share.
My friend recently purchased some Justin’s brand Almond Butter to feed to her 3 year old who has a severe peanut allergy. She walked into Whole Foods, looked for the almond butter and picked up three little packets (because she was traveling, and needed the convenience). She’s been feeding this Almond butter to her children for years, so she didn’t hesitate when she saw the little packages.  She fed her daughter the first packet with no issues, but it was when she opened the second packet in a room full of family and children running all around that the problem arose. The package wasn’t almond butter, but peanut butter.  In the craziness around here, and with the comfort of the same label that she had always seen, she didn’t hesitate to make her daughter a sandwich and feed it to her.  A few bites later her daughter began to show signs of an allergic reation.  As her mother rushed her to the emergency room, the rest of us frantically searched for the source of the peanuts, thinking maybe another child had given her some candy tainted with it, or something.  We never imagined it was the “Almond Butter” she had used to make her sandwich.  It wasn’t until the next day when I was packing up her stuff to take to her, that I noticed the small package of Peanut Butter in the fridge.  NOT having a peanut allergy, and never having used this brand before, the words PEANUT BUTTER stood out to me quickly. I called my friend and she quickly went and checked her packages and discovered only the top one had been almond butter, and the rest were peanut butter.  This was probably the error of a customer who placed a package of almond butter back on the wrong stack.  However the concern that we have is that this simple mistake was SO EASY TO MAKE . I mean at first glance the packages look identical, other than the words.  I don’t stop to read the words on things I’ve used and bought hundreds of times, do you?  We are trying to get the word out so that other families don’t make the same mistake!  Please spread the word, and if you have a chance- give Justin’s a call and ask them to change their packaging, will you?  We are hoping that enough voices will prevent this from happening in the future.

And in case you are wondering- of COURSE my friend is feeling HORRIBLE for not reading the package, and in the future she will read the packaging of everything she puts in her child’s mouth- even if she bought it with her own 2 hands and thought it was totally safe.  But you should know that this is a PARANOID allergy mom we are talking about.  She is seriously vigilant and almost drives us crazy with how vigilant she is.  I had frantically cleaned my house, even vaccuming the cracks in my wood floor before her daughter came, so that she could rest easy and be comfortable in our home.  I am in NO way trying to blame her for this mistake, we all know how hectic a mom’s life gets- and she really believed she had bought Almond butter- so why should she double check?  It’s how EASILY this mistake was made that scares me, and how easily it could happen again.