When the Food & Drug Administration began recalling peanut butter and peanut paste in one of the largest food recalls in the nation's history, the Benton County Environmental Health Division was prepared.

Just weeks prior to the recall, the division launched its Food Safety Alerting System, which notifies restaurants of food safety concerns via email.

"My staff and I had talked about it, and we thought that it was probably a good idea to put something in place to get information out quickly to our target customers," said Bill Emminger, deputy administrator with the county's Environmental Health Division. "It seemed like a good, common-sense thing to put in place."

The system debuted several weeks ago, when the department sent out an informational e-mail.

"The very next thing we ended up coming across is this Class 1 recall from the FDA," Emminger said. "It really was the first test of the system."

Class 1 recalls, the most serious issued by the Food and Drug Administration, are issued when a product can cause serious illness or death. It's exactly the type of scenario the county had in mind when officials started the local system.

"What we were specifically interested in is getting out time-sensitive information that the restaurant industry might need to act on," Emminger said.

No recalled products have yet been found in Benton County restaurants.

"Some of that might be the nature of the recall and the kinds of foods that are involved in the recall, but I'd also like to think that our altering system gave people a heads up," Emminger said.

Not every restaurant in the county gets the alerts.

"When we just did license renewals, we started encouraging restaurants to send us e-mail addresses so that we could start building that database," Emminger said. "At this point it's essentially a voluntary subscription."

The hope is that establishments not on the list will hear that it's helpful and sign up.

"It has started some conversation, and it's all been favorable conversation, of 'Oh, this is really great information' and 'How can I get on this list as well?'" Emminger said.

The alert system has been particularly relevant in this recall, which Emminger called an unusual situation.

Normally, by the time the health department was made aware of a recall, the FDA would have mostly taken care of the problem by tracking the implicated product.

"In this case it's atypical because this one manufacturer sent product to other manufacturers, who in turn used it in a large array of product," he said. "So this has this kind of spiderweb effect."

Anyone can sign up for the service, but Emminger pointed out that the information is targeted to the Benton County restaurant industry.

"Our intent is not to overuse it, but really to only use it when there is important, late-breaking information that restaurateurs really need to know about," he said.

To be added to alert system, call the Benton County Environmental Health Division at 541-766-6841.