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from the cant-make-profit-so-no-one-gets-benefit dept.
Papas Fritas writes:
The Christian Science Monitor reports that Costco will dump almost one million jars of peanut butter into a New Mexico landfill and bulldoze over them after retailer Costco refused to take shipment of the peanut butter and declined requests to let it be donated to food banks or repackaged or sold to brokers who provide food to institutions like prisons. The peanut butter comes from a bankrupt peanut-processing plant that was at the heart of a salmonella outbreak in 2012 and although "all parties agreed there's nothing wrong with the peanut butter from a health and safety issue," court records show that on a 19 March conference call Costco said "it would not agree to any disposition ... other than destruction."
Despite the peanut butter being safe, Curry County landfill employee Tim Stacy says that no one will be able to consume the peanut butter once it's dumped because it was immediately rolled over with a bulldozer, destroying the supply. Stacy added more trash will then be dumped on top of the pile. Sonya Warwick, spokeswoman for New Mexico's largest food bank, declined to comment directly on the situation, but she noted that rescued food accounted for 74% of what Roadrunner Food Bank distributed across New Mexico last year. "Access to rescued food allows us to provide a more well-rounded and balanced meal to New Mexicans experiencing hunger." No word yet on where anyone was going to find a million jars of jelly.
(Score: 1) by jasassin on Tuesday April 01 2014, @01:16AM
At first I thought, right on! Then I imagined some poor bastard cracking open a million jars of peanut butter and spatula slinging peanut butter into a pig trough.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 01 2014, @12:23PM
You could mildly heat the jars so it flows, and then centrifuge fast enough to get 95% of it out of the jars but not break the jars.
You'll have to figure out what to do with the empty jars, anyway. If they're glass, and you dumped them in the ocean, would they create an artificial reef for little fish to breed or just be a waste dump (or both?)
Google makes all this self driving car junk that no one's ever going to widely use for legal liability reasons, but the same smart guys could program a COTS industrial robot to pick up a jar and spatula out the pigfood. Its about the same class of semi real time camera-articulator coordination along with some heuristics and image identification.
One problem I had not considered is aged out oils which are rancid smell and taste awful, so unless they're really hungry pigs might not go for it. May be stuck composting. Which will still require the robot emptier.