SAFEWAY VOLUNTARILY RECALLING ICE CREAM

MARYELLEN LO BOSCO

PLEASANTON, Calif. -- Safeway here is voluntarily recalling all codes and dates for Safeway Select Light Pralines and Cream ice cream.

The half-gallon containers are being recalled because pecans are not listed on the ingredient label. Pecans may cause a serious or life-threatening allergic reaction in some people.

The ice cream was distributed in Safeway's Northern California, Eastern and Northwest divisions, which cover Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, California, Nevada, Hawaii, Mexico, Washington D.C. and Maryland.

Customers are being told to return any Select Light Pralines and Cream package, empty and clean, to their local stores for a full refund.

The ice cream was meant to include pecans in its formulation, as well as pralines, but the pecans were never put on the ingredient label, according to Debra Lambert, spokeswoman for the chain,

The absence of the information on the label was brought to Safeway's attention by a customer in California, who experienced an allergic reaction to the pecans.

Lambert declined to comment on how the error was made. "I don't know and I don't want to speculate," she said. "We are conducting our own review and looking into the matter."

She stressed, however, that Safeway reacted immediately once it learned of the error. "The accuracy of our labels has to be 100% correct. So once we found out that pecans were omitted [from the label], we initiated a voluntary recall within hours," she said.

Select Pralines and Cream is not a new item, and Lambert also declined to comment on how long the ice cream variety has been on the market or whether the ingredient label has always omitted pecans.

Last year, Safeway initiated two other recalls: one of private-label Lucerne Ghiradelli Chocolate Almond ice cream, and the other of private-label Mrs. Wright's chocolate chip cookies, because some of lots were suspected of containing peanuts not listed on the label.

In the case of the previous two recalls, the peanuts were not part of the product formulation, but they may have inadvertently been included in some of the lots.

Safeway recalled the ice cream after a customer complained of finding a peanut in the carton.

At that time, Lambert told SN that samples of production runs had not turned up any peanuts, and that it was unlikely that peanuts had, in fact, gotten into the whole batch. Lambert stressed that the current recall is in no way similar to the previous ones, in that the products in question -- Lucerne Ghiradelli Chocolate ice cream and Mrs. Wright's chocolate chip cookies -- were not manufactured by Safeway, and did not have peanuts in their formulations.