When the peanuts arrive at the peanut butter factory, workers remove 50-pound samples of peanuts from each shipment. Then a person called a quality control technician treats the sample peanuts with chemicals in a laboratory. The technician checks the samples for aflatoxin, a toxin, or poisonous substance, that is caused by mold in peanuts.
If the peanuts aren't moldy, they go on to be cleaned again. They go through a gravity separator just like the one at the shelling plant. Workers at the peanut butter factories want to be sure that their product is 100 percent clean.
Now the peanuts are roasted. This happens in a large, multi-chamber roasting machine. In the first chamber, the peanuts are cooked at about 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Then they travel on a conveyor belt to the next chamber, where they are cooked again. In the last chambers, they are cooled. This whole process takes about 15 minutes.
Next the peanuts are blanched, which means that the skins are removed. Peanuts are blanched between two rubber-coated, grooved wheels that look like car tires. As the peanuts pass between them, the wheels loosen the skins. Then a vacuum device sucks the skins off.
If they won't be used right away, the blanched peanuts travel to a storage tank. Otherwise, they are piped into a 100-foot-long suction tube called an electronic feed system. The tube sucks the peanuts into a room where they will be ground up.
