Pundit’s Mailbag —
Wal-Mart’s Upscale Effort
Our piece, Hormel, Wal-Mart And The Meaning Of Upscale, brought a number of comments. The piece began by dissecting an article about Hormel and, specifically, the difficulties the maker of Spam experienced in trying to broaden its market to upscale and ethnic foods. The article detailed how Hormel used various brands to market various ethnic […]
Are Goji Berries The Next Health Craze?
The Pundit is sitting here munching on some Dole brand Tibetan Sun-Dried Goji Berries. The label says they are “Provided by Extreme Health USA,” and the pitch is that one should “Compare Antioxidants.” The label shows an amount of antioxidants more than twice that of blueberries. As the ever politique Karen Caplan from Frieda’s explains […]
Taco Bell’s E. Coli Woes
The recent news that Yum Brands’ quick-serve Mexican concept Taco Bell was implicated in an E. coli outbreak was, of course, distressing. Although, so far, they have not identified the dangerous E. coli H0157:H7 strain found during the spinach crisis, many people have been hospitalized with some developing the hemolytic uremic syndrome that could lead […]
Is WGA’s Food Safety Proposal
Up To The Job?
In the course of our discussions with buyers who didn’t elect to sign onto the Buyer-led Food Safety Initiative, we heard from those who wanted to keep the media buzz down and those who felt it was the government’s job to establish food safety regulations. Some buyers thought there was a lot of ulterior motives […]
Pundit Rewind XXXVIII
The Pundit originally ran the Pundit Rewind on September 21, 2006. We continuously update it in order to keep everyone organized with respect to reference material on this subject; we have updated it with new items and run it again today. Spinach Crisis Summary With so much having been written in so short a time, […]
Botulism And Carrot Juice Summary XXVIII
We’ve been asked to make available in one place our coverage of the recall by Wm. Bolthouse Farms of certain 100% carrot juice products and the broader implications of this issue for food safety. This piece is updated regularly and will be re-run to include new coverage of this outbreak and issue. We initiated our […]
Buyer-led Food Safety Initiative Recap X
There is an ad-hoc group that started it all, the National Restaurant Association has its group working on a program and the Food Marketing Institute has a conference planned. All these buyer-led initiatives can get confusing, so to assist the trade in keeping track of them all, we are publishing this recap of coverage all […]
Pundit’s Mailbag — Sprout Lessons Echo Food Safety Dilemma
We are fortunate here at the Pundit to have been able to tap into the expertise of Bob Sanderson, President of Jonathan’s Sprouts, headquartered in Rochester. Massachusetts, many times over the past few months. It is notable that in the testimony of Robert E. Brackett, FDA’s Director for the Center for Food Safety and Applied […]
Speaking Of Produce Washes
Tenessee State University did a presentation entitled: Using Consumer and laboratory Research for the Development of a Printed and On-line Brochure Promoting Consumption of Safer Fruits and Vegetables Basically it is a presentation about how they researched what are good practices for consumers and then created a brochure, both in print and online, to promote […]
Spinach And The Consequences
Of Buyers’ Actions
In exploring reasons why some buyers have declined to join the Buyer-led Food Safety Initiative, we’ve uncovered several concerns. First we heard from those expressing a concern about the promotion of the initiative to the consumer press. Then we analyzed the thought that had been expressed that the buyer effort was not what was needed […]
