Author Archives: Brae Surgeoner

ConAgra looks to win Peter Pan consumers back

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Reuters reported yesterday that ConAgra Foods Inc.  is gearing up to bring Peter Pan back to life.

The company plans to relaunch the peanut butter this month with a new jar, a money-back guarantee and an extensive direct marketing campaign to reach 5 million Peter Pan consumers.

David Palfenier, president of grocery for ConAgra, was quoted as saying, "Our full intent is to regain the trust from both our consumers and our (retail) customers so that we can regain the business that we had, or even more."

The Salmonella contamination, which was likely the result of a leaky roof and faulty sprinklers, sickened 628 people in 47 states and caused the company to shut down its Sylvester, Georgia, plant, the company’s lone peanut butter plant.

According to the story, 80 per cent of former Peter Pan users have told ConAgra they will once again use Peter Pan and three-of-five retailers are reportedly going to give Peter Pan more shelf space than before the outbreak.

Palfenier would not say how much ConAgra planned to spend on the relaunch, but did indicate it would be the single-largest investment ever made in Peter Pan.

Raw almonds, the new raw milk

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According to a press release from the  Cornucopia Institute small-scale farmers, retailers, and consumers are renewing their call to reassess a USDA plan to "pasteurize". The press release says that all domestic almonds must have the treatments by early next year in response to outbreaks of Salmonella in 2001 and 2004.

Will Fantle, research director for The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group, was quoted as saying, "The almond ‘pasteurization’ plan presents many harmful impacts for consumers and the agricultural community. The logic behind both the necessity and safety of the treatments processes has not been adequately analyzed."

Last Wednesday, the California Almond Board requested a delay in the treatment mandate until March, 2008, which had previously been set for September.

Fantle was further quoted as saying, "We support this delay, but a delay, due to the industry being unprepared, isn’t enough. The USDA must also re-open the rule for public review and comment so that those who have been shut out of the decision-making process can have input into any almond treatment plan."

Already producers were coming up with ‘nutty solutions’ to offer customers the opportunity to “rent” trees for the season. In the same way that cow share programs allow raw-milk advocates to legally obtain unpasteurized dairy products,  “tree shares” would allow almond eaters to keep eating raw almonds.

Organic industry reaps new profits from ‘fear factor’ of food recalls

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The Montreal Gazette today reports that product recalls are like a death knell for food firms, but for a niche segment of the food industry, recalls aren’t a thing to be feared – in fact, they are cause for celebration.
Maryellen Molyneaux, president of the Natural Marketing Institute, after speaking at the annual Institute of Food Technologists conference this week, was quoted as saying, "Food scares are always good for the organic industry. You can look at that historically."
Carly Weeks writes that organic food companies often reap the benefit when the traditional, mainstream market is hit with a scandal about tainted food or contaminated products. It’s a trend she says the organic industry likes to refer to as the "fear factor" – more consumers are turning to their products because they’re losing faith in what traditional grocers have to offer.
"Organic" refers to a method used to produce foods rather than to characteristics of the food itself. Thus, no distinctions should be made between organically and non-organically produced food products in terms of safety. Producers, yes, but production systems, no.

Food safety craze catching on in Manhattan, KS

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BarfBlog’s most recent posts have emphasized the need to use a food thermometer to verify the internal temperature of potentially hazardous food like hamburgers. Although the use of a food thermometer is the best method to ensure microbial food safety, numerous studies have shown the practice is seldom used; many cooks continue to trust color and cooking time as a reliable indicator of doneness.

Encouraging cooks to use a food thermometer is no easy task, and so it was with much surprise that I caught sight of a food thermometer integrated into the summer Grillin’ store display of the Palace in Aggieville. It may not be an instant-read digital meat thermometer (think PDT300), but it’s a thermometer and it helps to create awareness. More kitchen appliance stores need to get on board and promote the use of food thermometers.

Stick er’ in – Don’t eat poop!

Consumer alert: Autumn Valley Farm (NY) raw milk

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The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets this afternoon released a CONSUMER ALERT after Autumn Valley Farm announced possible Listeria contamination in its raw, unpasteurized milk.

Autumn Valley Farm, located at 1644 County Highway #39, Worcester, New York, 12197, holds a Department permit to legally sell raw milk at the farm.

While Autumn Valley Farm prides themselves on the cleanliness of their dairy operation and has been selling raw milk for the last 8 months without any previous violations, all raw milks sales have been voluntarily suspended pending further sampling.

While you were sleeping

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Doug’s most recent post on BarfBlog emphasized the need for public communications about food safety to be rapid, reliable, repeated and relevant. He noted that the produce outbreaks of 2006 marked significant changes in how stories were being told on Internet-based networking like YouTube, wikipedia, and blogs.

The Internet is a wild world. And while companies are paying think tanks big bucks to brainstorm strategies to reach the millions of people that are flocking to new platforms like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and the blogosphere, it would be wise to pay attention to what is already being said.

The Panera Bread Co. group for example, has a message board discussing the, "Nastiest things you’ve (employees) found in the bathroom!!!" — great for advertising.

Last night (while I was sleeping), a kitchen employee commented on a Barfblog post that I created to highlight how restaurant inspection reports are made public in Manhattan, Kansas. He had the following to say:

"Everything that article mentions is true, and I KNOW from experience there have been an Incalcuable amount of unrecorded violations that occur in that disgusting kitchin. I know because I’ve cooked there since february."

SO… do you know what is being said online about your business? And how would you/are you dealing with the discussion?

“The Lord takes care of us”

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The York Daily Record in Pennsylvania reported Sunday that Stump Acres Dairy has stopped giving away raw milk after some customers became sick and were diagnosed with salmonella this month, marking the third time this year that the North Codorus Township dairy has stopped selling or giving away raw milk because of customers becoming ill.

In April when the dairy suspended raw milk sales for the second time in a month under the advice of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, which warned that the milk might be associated with a case of gastrointestinal illness, co-owner Glendora Stump was quoted as telling the York Dispatch, "The Lord takes care of us. I’m not afraid to sell my milk. I know it’s not what they think it is."

Yesterday however, Terry Stump, the son of the dairy owner, was cited as saying Stump Acres hasn’t sold raw milk for about two months, but the dairy has given it away to people who ask for it, adding, "We will not be giving it away. Nobody wants to see anybody getting sick."

What’s going to happen when things get a little more complicated?

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The National Post reports today that 4 out of 10 "street meat" stands inspected this year failed to meet city health standards.
Jim Chan, a manager of food safety with Toronto Public Health, told the National Post that out of 68 carts tested this year, only 41 have been given the green pass from the city’s Dine-Safe program.
"Twenty-six of them received a conditional pass [and] one received a red card, which is a closure."
With Toronto allowing more than just hot dogs and sausages to be sold on the street next year, the story notes that stringent rules will be put in place to make sure Torontonians stay healthy: this includes carts require mechanical cooling, an increase in the number of inspections per year, and requiring not only a separate handwash basin with running hot and cold water, but an additional sink for washing utensils.

Mobile cheese-making operations fall through the cracks; 2 dozen people feel it

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The Ottawa Citizen reports that two dozen people in Eastern Ontario became ill after eating unpasteurized cheese that a farmer was not legally allowed to distribute.
According to the story, the cheese was made by a "mobile cheese maker," hired by the dairy farmer to visit the farm with his factory on wheels.

In early June, the farmer, in St. Pascal-Baylon, 30 kilometres east of Ottawa, hired one of five travelling cheese makers who operate in Eastern Ontario. This product was later distributed – and sold – to neighbours, friends, relatives and classmates of a child of the farmer.
The unpasteurized cheese caused several cases of bacterial infection. Symptoms included diarrhea, stomach cramps, fevers and headaches.

While the Eastern Ontario Health Unit strongly recommends the consumption of only pasteurized milk products, in Ontario, people who make unpasteurized cheese on their farms can possess and eat what they make. However, selling or distributing such cheese – which includes even giving it away – is illegal under provincial legislation.
The story notes that unlike raw milk itself, which has been illegal to distribute in Canada since 1991, cheese made from raw milk – as far as Health Canada is concerned – is "allowed for sale and considered safe because the manufacturing process for cheese helps to eliminate many pathogens found in raw milk."
The tricky part about the case of the St. Pascal-Baylon farmer is that while the farmer himself broke the law, the mobile cheese maker did not.

While the Eastern Ontario Health Unit has identified five mobile cheese-making operations, it can’t do much more than educate them about the risks and their responsibilities. Caroline Kuate, food safety program co-ordinator at the Eastern Ontario Health Unit, was quoted as saying, "These operators are not within our jurisdiction. They are under no one’s jurisdiction. This is a case where they fall in the cracks."

Yeah, I expect to hear about this…

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Ah…yes… the hard data on illnesses from raw milk, as posted yesterday on the Complete Patient by blogmaster David E. Gumpert. According to his post, a request filed last year with the CDC under the Freedom of Information Act, for data on illnesses associated with raw milk and pasteurized milk, revealed that approximately 59 people are sickened each and every year, which can be further reduced to 54 if you exclude those who became sick from imported Mexican cheese.
 
To any health guru, I would think that 54 illnesses are 54 too many. Especially, when I’m guessing that at least 50 per cent of those sickened are children (see the table we manage on suspected and confirmed raw milk-related outbreaks). While David points out that the CDC figures may be inflated because, “Food vehicles identified are not necessarily confirmed with statistical or epidemiological evidence,” the vast majority of foodborne illnesses go unreported to start with. And I can’t help but think that for black-market food items like raw milk, underreporting is even higher than for a staple food item because so few people want to be known as a sellout. For a product with such a long list of supposed healing powers no one should be getting sick — right?