The idea that thousands of customers had purchased cans of Castleberry's Food Co.'s chili and hot dog sauce that might carry the botulism toxin alarmed Sandy Glatter so much that she wanted to alert them all personally.

Ms. Glatter, Giant Eagle's senior director of quality assurance, figured the grocer would at least have contact information for shoppers who had Advantage Cards. She told her team, "Let's call them. How hard can it be?"

Pretty hard, it turned out. A check of the grocer's computer records found 86,000 people had bought the affected items in the past two years. Daunted, the team went with Plan B -- posting information in stores and electronically blocking sales at checkouts.

For now, officials involved hope those efforts, combined with the manufacturer's own efforts to publicize the mid-July recall, will keep anyone from getting sick.

But during the past year, the grocer has been looking at making its own system, which was designed to push products out, better at reversing the process.

About two months ago, Giant Eagle enabled its computers to block sales of recalled items, said Ms. Glatter. In the first test, managers were able to override the block at the checkout, so the company changed the software. In the case of the Castleberry's recall, that stopped the sale of cans that employees hadn't had time to pull off the shelves.

Technology will also play a part in the next step. After years of relying on an old-fashioned phone tree to get word out to hundreds of store managers, the grocer is eight to 12 weeks away from turning on an automated system that will call stores with a recorded message and require them to punch in a code acknowledging they received it. The plan is to make it easy for managers to quickly pull up the recall information on their computers, replacing the notebooks of faxed recall data used now.

To speed its own awareness of problems, the grocer several months ago began subscribing to Foodtrack, a service that constantly scouts various sources to learn about product recalls. Ms. Glatter said Foodtrack sent the alert on Castleberry's more than nine hours before the Food and Drug Administration's notice came.

Convinced one key to making recalls effective is preventing them, Giant Eagle sent a letter to its vendors in June asking all of its suppliers to detail where the ingredients for their products were coming from. The goal is to ensure that a reliable third party is auditing the production process, something that can be more challenging in countries such as China.

Finally, Ms. Glatter hasn't given up on an idea that came when she was talking with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt as he toured a Giant Eagle store in northeastern Ohio two weeks ago. He's part of a commission appointed by President Bush to study import safety.

When Ms. Glatter told the secretary about her failed proposal to call customers to warn them about the can recall, he asked if the grocer could have sent out e-mails. She didn't think that would be effective, in part because the company doesn't request e-mail addresses and because people might think they were being spammed.

But it did spark the idea of setting up an automated system, like the one that will alert stores, that would call Advantage Card users when something they bought was recalled. Ms. Glatter estimated 90 percent of the company's shoppers have the loyalty cards. "We could actually reach a lot of people," she said.

The staff is investigating the potential for such a system and, so far, it looks workable. She knows there may be some who worry the grocer might abuse its power to call them at home, but she thinks they could be convinced by the fact that the goal is to keep them safe.

Even now, some consumers might still have some of the affected Castleberry's cans in the pantry. "You could still miss a few. It's possible."

For more information about the Castleberry's recall, see www.castleberrys.com, www.cfsan.fda.gov, www.fsis.usda.gov/, or www.cdc.gov/botulism/