Tag Archives: Marketing

Oregon: Live dangerously with dogs; lose a sandwich

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Oregon seems like a lovely place. Never been, although the sense of dopiness in the state has apparently gotten so bad that the state Department of Agriculture has to allocate resources to a public awareness campaign to remind Oregonians it’s illegal for dogs to enter grocery stores – unless it’s a service dog.

Vance Bybee, administrator of the agency’s Food Safety Division, told the Charleston Daily Mail,

"There’s a trend, a growing trend, for people to treat their pets like a member of the family, but they forget we still have to draw the line between our furry children and those without paws.”

Is he talking about my hairy baby? Is he discriminating against children with paws? This is probably the worst attempt at being cute in a quote — ever.

"Interestingly enough, we get more complaints in Bend and in the Pearl District of Portland where people are more affluent and have the opportunity to pamper their pets and feel this pet is a part of my family so I am entitled to do with it what I like."

Bybee said the division gets more than 100 complaints a year about dogs doing inappropriate things in grocery stores, from urinating in the aisles to sniffing and licking food. The Portland Farmers Market banned dogs earlier this year because vendors and shoppers complained about sanitation, safety and crowding. One vendor lost a sandwich to a dog, and one customer who got tangled in a leash had to be taken to the hospital.
 

Stickers source watermelons to California farm

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The San Francisco Chronicle reports that at a farm in Manteca, in San Joaquin County, workers smack labels onto watermelons freshly cut from the vine, each sticker bearing a unique string of letters and numbers that identifies where they were harvested.

Ryan Van Groningen of Van Groningen & Sons Farms, which sells watermelons under the Yosemite Fresh brand, said,

"With food safety as big as it is, we can give each watermelon its own code so a consumer can check on the Internet to see where it is grown.”

This new code, called the HarvestMark, is being developed by the Redwood City startup YottaMark Inc. at a time when Congress is considering food-safety legislation that could make some type of tracking system mandatory.

In advance of any legal mandate, a few growers have started putting HarvestMark codes on products like plastic-packaged grapes and strawberries, as well as watermelons.

The idea is to enable a consumer to type the 16-digit tracking code into a locator field at HarvestMark.com to learn where the product was grown. Depending on the grower’s records and what the farm chooses to reveal, the system could detail the date and part of the field where the product originated.

Great idea.

A decade ago, I advised the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers – whose cluster tomatoes still dominate supermarket shelves in Florida in the middle of summer – to do something similar, to market their food safety efforts directly to the concerned consumer.

For other produce producers, forget government babysitters and the non-niceties of offending other growers … growers who maybe aren’t so good at food safety.

Go further. Put a url on the sticker so concerned shoppers can check out a web site with video, not just about where a commodity was grown, but about food safety standards, and real-time test results for water quality and product sampling.

And then market it.
 

‘Change culture to avoid E. coli’

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Amy’s father and stepmom came for a visit and yesterday we went to a local eatery for a late lunch.

When Amy’s dad ordered a burger, the server asked how he would like the burger cooked.

He said medium-well.

The server said he could get the burger as rare as he wanted.

Amy said really, and started asking, just what was a medium-rare burger.

The server said it all had to do with color, and after some back and forth with the cooks, said the beef they get has nothing bad in it anyway.

Color is a lousy indicator.

During the same meal, a reporter called to ask, why do companies – big companies, huge chains and brand names — knowingly follow or ignore bad safety practices? (that story should appear Sunday).

It comes down to culture – the food safety culture of a restaurant, a supermarket, a butcher shop, a government agency.

Culture encompasses the shared values, mores, customary practices, inherited traditions, and prevailing habits of communities. The culture of today’s food system (including its farms, food processing facilities, domestic and international distribution channels, retail outlets, restaurants, and domestic kitchens) is saturated with information but short on behavioral-change insights. Creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems, including compelling, rapid, relevant, reliable and repeated, multi-linguistic and culturally-sensitive messages.

Sixteen years after E. coli O157:H7 killed four and sickened hundreds who ate hamburgers at the Jack-in-the-Box chain, the challenge remains: how to get people to take food safety seriously? ??????Lots of companies do take food safety seriously and the bulk of American meals are microbiologically safe. But recent food safety failures have been so extravagant, so insidious and so continual that consumers must feel betrayed.??????

Frank Yiannas, the vice-president of food safety at Wal-Mart writes in his book, Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-based Food Safety Management System, that an organization’s food safety systems need to be an integral part of its culture.

The other guru of food safety culture, Chris Griffith of the University of Wales, features prominently in the report by Professor Hugh Pennington into the 2005 E.coli outbreak in Wales that killed 5-year-old Mason Jones and sickened another 160 school kids.

Yesterday, the board of the U.K. Food Standards Agency (FSA), in response to Pennington’s report, approved a five-year plan that will push food businesses to adopt a food safety culture and comply with hygiene laws, and urge stricter punishments for those that do not. The FSA will also ensure health inspectors are better trained.

A report put before FSA board members in London stated “culture change in all of the relevant parts of the food supply chain” is necessary.

Mason Jones’ mum Sharon Mills said she is pleased with the action being taken by the FSA.

“This sounds promising and shows they are moving in the right direction. … Things are slowly changing and hopefully we will all see the benefits sooner rather than later.”

Maybe. I’m still not convinced FSA understands what culture is all about. And how will these changes be evaluated. Is there any evidence that social marketing is effective in creating food safety behavior change? Those issues get to the essence of food safety culture, yet are glossed over with a training session – more of the same.

And why wait for government. The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants should go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent — whether it’s live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website — to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.

How to greenwash food packaging; market food safety instead

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Eat Me Daily is fast becoming one of my go-to sites. They write today:

This illustration by Lunchbreath is basically a checklist for corporate greenwashing: Earth tones, sans serif type, unbleached paper, and emotional messaging are essential components of the deceptive marketing techniques employed by corporations that rebrand their products.
We liked the customer benefit: "Be selfish while appearing progressive."

Market food safety instead. People are interested in not barfing.

Food safety culture and marketing go together

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I’ve been writing and talking for a couple of years about the importance of food safety culture from farm-to-fork, and that companies should become more aggressive about marketing their food safety efforts.

Turns out, the two ideas can feed each other, in a synergistic manner (Chapman made the pic).

Those companies that promote food safety culture can market their activities, and then consumers have a way to choose at the check-out aisle, providing feedback to those companies that make food safety a public priority.

Can regulators regulate and promote? Safe food sells

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I cringe when pompous professorial types begin sentences with, “Clearly …” 

It happens a lot.

Over the years, I’ve repeatedly heard a variation of, “Clearly, government agencies can’t regulate and promote food at the same time.” I was on National Public Radio in Maryland a few weeks ago and the statement was repeated mantra-like by both the host and some activist dude.

Yesterday, it was Sylvain Charlebois, a business professor at the University of Regina, telling Canadian parliamentarians they should establish an independent food safety agency reporting directly to Parliament because the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is failing consumers because of its “dual mandate.”

That wasn’t so clear to Ronald Doering (right) who served as the CFIA’s president from 1997 to 2002 and practically designed the agency. He called Charlebois’s proposal to "hive off food safety" to a body reporting to Parliament instead of to a minister, “silly.”

"The principle consensus all around was if you’re going to reorganize how you’re going to do food safety, animal heath and plant protection, you’ve got to make sure you’ve got accountability right. All parties agreed that we needed to have the agency report directly to a minister in the traditional way, and there could be no doubt that the minister the agency reported to would be accountable for its work."

Sure, CFIA has problems — like staff figuring out how to subscribe to FSnet. About 400 of them got deleted last week because of repeated error messages due to changes in e-mail addresses. About 250 figured out how to resubscribe; the other 150 decided to personally e-mail and demand I play secretary. Veterinarians with entitlement issues?

Back to the issue. I’ve always thought it’s easier to market safe food and never had much time for the armchair conspiracy theorists.

Doering also said it’s "simplistic" to argue the CFIA’s dual mandate presents a problem for consumers. Rather, he said Canadians are well-served by putting "the whole food chain in a single enforcement agency, so the CFIA is responsible for seeds, feed, fertilizers, all plant health, all animal health, all food, all commodities because they are all connected."

"The Canadian food, animal health and plant regulatory system is admired around the world. The idea we can export to a 100 countries food, animal or plants without inspection has to say something about the credibility of the regulatory agency."

Selling home-baking banned in Urbana

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It’s springtime so bring on variable interpretation of health code rules, the plight of home bakers and outraged local politicians.

"I will not stay silent. Most people who go to the farmers’ market know it’s not made in a commercial-grade kitchen."

That’s Alderwoman Heather Stevenson, R-Ward 6, of Urbana, Illinois, criticizing a new policy banning the sales of home-baked goods, at Monday’s city council meeting.

Jim Roberts, director of environmental health for the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District said the district has long allowed the sale of many home-baked goods at farmers’ market but after he attended a January panel discussion about farmers’ markets sponsored by the University of Illinois Extension Service and The Land Connection, and after checking with other area health departments, he felt compelled to revisit the issue.

He said, selling baked goods commercially on a weekly basis for several months a year is "a business," and is not allowed under the law unless the baked goods are cooked in a certified kitchen with a permit from the health department.

Roberts made the mistake of thinking, and then publicly sharing his thoughts.

My understanding is that public health types are actively discouraged from such nefarious activities, otherwise they face the wrath of local politicians.

We shared our thoughts about the necessity of health umpires here a couple of years ago.
 

Maple Lodge to market food safety on deli meats; will Maple Leaf follow?

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Maple Lodge Farms is Canada’s largest independent chicken processor and I’ve been to the slaughter plant in Brampton, Ontario. With all the Maple Leaf listeria stuff over the past eight months, Maple Lodge has been sorta quiet.

Until today.

Maple Lodge chief executive officer Michael Burrows unveiled a new high-pressure method of killing listeria and other bacteria in sliced luncheon meats after the package is sealed. The process applies water under extremely high pressure to the packaged product, has no adverse impact on the product itself, and has been approved by Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

So Maple Leaf, using that newfangled blogging technology, responded by saying Maple Leaf Foods was an early adopter of Ultra High Pressure (UHP) technology in Canada and began using it in Maple Leaf Simply Fresh entree products when they were introduced more than two years ago, in a bunch of other products, and will look at using it in deli meat if it can provide added food safety assurance to consumers.

Maple Leaf, seriously, you need better writers.

But this is what I like about the Maple Lodge approach:

They came out and said internal research showed consumer demand for higher levels of food safety has risen sharply in the past year, and that consumers would be willing to pay a premium of 1-2 cents per 100 grams of product to get it.

Maybe, consumers will say anything on a survey but vote with their money at checkout.

But Maple Lodge is going to label the stuff with a" SafeSure" sticker and market food safety at retail.

Good for them. Rather than lecturing consumers, let them choose. At checkout.

Farmers markets on campus – where’s the food safety?

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University campuses are often the first mainstream pressure point to be hit with food fads. So it’s no surprise the Los Angeles Times reports this morning that a growing number of colleges are finding that campus farmers markets are a great fit, tapping into students’ interest in sustaining the planet with an appealing combination of food, music and lots of people hanging out.

The University of Southern California held its first market in February 2008, the result of meetings between students and university officials that began in fall 2007.

Scott Shuttleworth, the university’s director of hospitality said that having at least one farmer at the market was important to give shoppers a chance to talk with someone about "eco-friendly agriculture and organic and natural farming practices."

I’m not sure at what point only local, natural types who hang out at farmers markets cornered the language on “sustaining the planet” but it happened a while ago – and without discussion. As usual, what was lacking from the coverage was any discussion of microbial food safety standards; even suggesting such basics can bring the wrath of a tyrannical religion.

The author of the blog, Conkey’s Tavern, who’s a fan of local, as am I, agreed the other day with the idea of data: water quality results, data on soil amendments, evidence of compliance with handwashing and safe handling.

??????It isn’t about local, small or big. It’s about what will make folks barf. And that requires control of dangerous microorganisms, regardless of politics.
 

The sucess of perceived safety as seen in kosher foods

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A recent survey by Mintel found that Americans choose to buy kosher foods because of perceptions of quality (62%), healthfulness (51%), and safety (34%) over religious reasons.

Similar trends have also been seen in the UK and Canada.

Krista Faron, a senior new product analyst at Mintel, was quoted by meatprocess.com as saying,

“Particularly in the recent past, Americans have been overwhelmed by food safety scares. People are very concerned and having some certification on the foods they buy can appease some of those fears.”

She also explained where many consumers find that comfort.

“The presence of the kosher mark itself suggests that there is [an inspection] process in place. It is all about consumer perception that there is some sort of formalized methodology…My sense is that consumers probably couldn’t tell us what kosher meant, but the kosher mark is reassuring,” she said.

While kosher processing meets certain religious standards, there is no scientific basis for the perception of heightened safety. Imagine, then, what the marketing of actual food safety measures within a company could do for business.

Since a Mintel report in December 2007, kosher has continued to be the number one individual claim for new American food products.

"Microbiologically safe" could blast it out of the water.