Obama Health Bill Sends "Yankees" Peanut Factory Packing

The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act that President Obama signed into law this year didn't just bring us a fancy new FDA recall page. It also is sending the 125-year-old A.L. Bazzini Co., which makes the “official peanut of Yankee Stadium,” out of New York and into the loving embrace of Pennsylvania.

The firm, which moved from TriBeCa to Hunts Point in 1997, says the new regulations would require them to perform a $40-million-dollar update to their production facility. And since they have this "state of the art" plant in Allentown (thanks to their recent purchase of the chocolate company Bartons) it is just more cost efficient to move. The exit will mean the loss of 57 jobs in the Bronx (well, sort of—the company expects about 30 employees to move with them) but it isn't as bad as it could be!

"I won't pull all of Bazzini out of New York—not now, not ever," the company's CEO Rocco Damato said. The company will keep a small distribution center in the Bronx that will employ six people and they will also maintain some office positions in the city. It'll also keep providing peanuts to the Yankees, and may even open up some shops here in the future. As Damato says, "Bazzini is a New York brand. This is not what we wanted to do. We had no choice."