The letter from Bentonville, Arkansas looked official:

"Dear Mrs. Hughes:

"We regret to inform you the case of Chocolate Chunk Peanut Crunch Bars with sku number 792763016 which you purchased may have been contaminated by salmonella. Please bring them back to the store for a refund.

"Sincerely, Sam's Club"

Sure enough, there in my pantry was the case of Peanut Crunch Bars with sku number 792763016. Two out of 24 bars were still in the box.

It's a sad day for the Georgia peanut, the tuber-like fruit previously known as "nature's masterpiece of food value." At least 575 people have been sickened and eight may have died from the salmonella outbreak. Thousands of school kids haven't had peanut butter in their lunch boxes for weeks.

The Food and Drug Administration peanut product recall of over 1,500 products has revealed many things including lack of federal and state oversight of food processing facilities. Not only were metal fragments found in previous peanut product shipments from the Georgia plant in Blakely, all sorts of other sanitation issues were revealed including roaches, rats and mold.

As consumers, we've also learned the extent retailers track our purchasing behavior. As George Orwell prognosticated in his novel "1984," pervasive, invasive surveillance runs rampant. Big Brother is watching you.

It shouldn't have surprised me that somebody in Arkansas knew, not just that I bought a box of Peanut Crunch Bars, but they knew exactly which box I bought. What else do they know?

Will the next letter read: "Dear Mrs. Hughes, we have noticed you purchase an average of seven gallons of milk per week. Are you running a kitten farm or do you just have a lot of thirsty boys in your house? Have you ever considered buying a cow?"

Or perhaps: "Dear Mrs. Hughes, it seems you frequently purchase chocolate bars. Did you know they are cheaper by the dozen?"

Equally annoying are the plastic "customer loyalty" cards we must now keep in our wallets for every grocery store transaction. These programs are not as benign as they appear. There are penalties for non-compliance. Supermarkets have punitive pricing policies if you choose to purchase groceries without using their Member's Only cards. Chain pharmacies also economically strong-arm you into joining their club.

These programs pretend to reward your patronage when in reality they're tracking your purchases in Orwellian fashion. To call them "Customer Loyalty Programs" is to twist their true function just as Orwell's "Ministry of Peace" actually dealt with war and his "Ministry of Love" tortured people.

For awhile, I rebelled and would borrow the card of the person next to me in line. Finally, I succumbed to the economic reality: The tradeoff for cheaper groceries is loss of privacy. In these trying times, families need all the financial breaks they can get, especially in the supermarket aisles.

It's embarrassing enough at the grocery store when you have a cart full of cookies, chips and soda and run into your kid's teacher or you bump into the preacher while carrying a bottle of Chardonnay. Now we can also be shamed by our purchasing history. Perhaps it's time to buy organic everything and soy milk.

In these days of melamine-tainted dog food and baby formula, lead-laced toys, salmonella-spiked salsa and problematic peanut products, maybe it's not such a bad thing that someone somewhere is keeping tabs. Now that mankind has learned to make crystal meth in their bathtubs, maybe it's OK they're tracking how much cold medicine and antifreeze you purchase.

And remember, just because you may be paranoid, doesn't mean someone isn't watching you.

Amy Hughes is a Savannah writer and partner with Hughes Public Affairs.

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