Lemonade Off the Menu

    Adam Fine, the principal of East Hampton High School, sent a message to parents yesterday regarding a letter he had received from Whitsons, the school’s catering company, stating that a “foreign object” had been found “in an individual half-pint carton of OakTree lemonade with the expiration date of June 21, 2011.”

    Upon receiving news of the issue, the school took all of the Oak Tree products that fit the description off its shelves, and Oak Tree put “all juice and drink products from this manufacturer with this specific expiration date, on hold as a precautionary measure.”

    “Foreign object” may sound intriguing, but when contacted, Charlene Cosman, the chief financial officer of Oak Tree Dairy in East Northport, said it was not as serious as it sounds.

    “We received a product complaint about a foreign particle in a lemonade container on June 2 and immediately sent our quality control inspector to the location,” she said. “Upon preliminary examination, it appeared that the foreign particle was a scorched fragment of paper which may have been a result of a container being in contact with a heating element during the packaging process.” Although the inspector has sent the particle to a lab for further examination, there is no product recall at this time.