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Health Canada, a tool for buyers in Canada that costs little yet contains a lot.

Tuesday, April 30th, 2013

In Canada, it’s as simple as visiting the Health Canada Website. According to Wikipedia Health Canada (French: Santé Canada) is the department of the government of Canada with responsibility for national public health. Here you can find news releases, speeches, media notices and research a variety of data related to health and food safety within Canada.

Just as a recent post titled  “Buyers; Do you need a great place to research product quality and recall issues” that talked about The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission  the Canadian Government has many tools that buyers can use that also cost nothing. You just have to spend a little time on their site.

Sometimes the best tools are the ones you don’t have to pay for.

If you’d like to learn more about SafeSourcing tools that are free for your use, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services account manager.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in Sourcing Safe Foods, Sourcing Safe Products

Hamburg could make us all sick! Dr. Hamburg that is.

Friday, April 26th, 2013

Today’s post is by Ron Southard, President  & CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.

In a recent post titled “The stalemate in Washington resulting in spending cuts could literally make you SICK”  I suggested that furloughs for food-safety inspectors were not a good idea. Well instead of just  furloughs the FDA has decided to reduce total food-safety inspections by about 18% or $209M. That will result in 2100 fewer inspections according to an article in the April 25, 2013 issue of USA TODAY by Liz Szabo titled FOOD SAFETY, DRUG REVIEWS ‘COMPROMISED’. The article goes on to indicate that these cuts will also delay the implementation of the 2011 FOOD SAFETY MDERNIZATION ACT according to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg. What the heck, we’ve only been waiting since (let’s see) 2011. No big thing right? It’s just our nation’s health that’s at risk.

Of course in this case they don’t even tell us how many food inspectors this will impact or if the count is still the 8,400 it used to be.  I assume we could back into the number, but as the USA TODAY article points out, the FDA currently inspects less than 2% of all food imports anyway.

I’ll tell you as entrepreneurs, our new businesses cannot take this long to implement change when it presents itself or when legal requirements dictate. If they did, they would go out of business.  There certainly is no question that many of the politicians we have in Washington continue to be the wrong people.

Food Safety continues to be a huge issue in this country and around the globe. Businesses require nothing more than 100% support of their governments in order to reduce the impact of food borne illness. Do something.

If you’d like to understand how SafeSourcing addresses food safety in support of our customers sourcing process, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services account manager.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments

 

Posted in Sourcing Safe Foods

Buying Groceries is a SNAP!

Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013

Today’s post id from Debbie Wilcox, Vice President of Marketing and Professional Services at SafeSourcing.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal listed an astounding fact that 47.8 million Americans are currently on the food stamp program. The total food stamp benefits paid out in 2012 totaled $74.6 billion dollars. The new program,  which has been renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), has made buying groceries easier for recipients by introducing a debit type card that can be used to purchase approved items.

Even though an unbelievable 15% of the US population receives food stamp benefits, the qualification levels are pretty strict. To qualify for food stamp assistance, a family of three has to have a household income not exceeding $25,000. Many families could not get by without this assistance to help fill a basic need of proving food and meals.

So, beyond making the program easier to use, how can we help individuals and families make their dollar stretch further? By providing nutritional and healthy food and private label products at the best possible price. SafeSourcing can help grocers and other retailers ensure they are able to purchase products at the most competitive rates from a broad selection of suppliers through an e-negotiation sourcing event. We assist companies every day reduce their cost of goods, which means those companies can pass along savings in the form of lower prices to their customers.

Working together, we can make a difference. To find out more, contact a SafeSourcing representative today.  

We look forward to and appreciate your comments

Posted in Sourcing Safe Foods

Understanding the Technology of Traceability!

Monday, March 11th, 2013

Today’s post is by Mark Davis; Sr. Vice President and COO at SafeSourcing.

GS1, the global standards body, the FDA, and the USDA are just a few of the organizations that are striving to increase the safety of the food we eat with new standards, processes and regulations.  With recent scares in several food items in the past few years it is no wonder that people are becoming extremely focused  on how to trace our food back to its original source.  In today’s blog we will look at some of the technologies that are helping with this process.

Enterprise Software – There are many enterprise systems out there for warehouse management and enterprise resource management that can maintain the necessary data needed to meet traceability and recall requirements but the key to these programs working for your business is whether or not they have the additional features necessary to track category/industry specific details such as those faced by seafood and meat retailers, wholesalers, distributors and manufacturers.  Companies such as JustFoodERP specialize in tracking meat and seafood by-products during the course of their life, tracking not only down to individual cases, but also providing capabilities such as the Recipe Management module to help track the by-products of the meat and seafood into other products they sell.  By managing catch-weights with a serial number tracking system, solutions like these can ensure best practices for traceability throughout their organization.

RFID – Radio Frequency Identification is not a new technology but continued development of the technology for use in traceability improves daily.  Like a barcode it can contain a unique identifier that will trace the product back to its source.  Unlike a barcode, RFID tags can be secured to be difficult to tamper with or damage, they can be placed in packaging as opposed to outside the packaging like barcodes that must be able to be seen, and unlike barcodes they can be written to and updated as the product travels through the supply chain.  With one scan an RFID tag can provide the appropriate user pages worth of information without having to be connected to an enterprise solution which can be critical when a recall is being tracked.

DNA Sampling – During the major meat recalls in the early 2000’s, DNA sampling began to take shape and developed as an alternative to typical tracing methods at that time.  With a global database of animal DNA it is possible to trace every product and byproduct back the farm or processing point of origin.  Taking DNA samples from the each carcass at the farm or packaging plant, a profile is created and stored in the database.  At any point a new sample can be taken to verify the contents and origin of the meet.  The process is virtually tamper-proof and would eliminate costly barcodes and documents and would also allow retailers and distributors to know exactly which shipments to recall, saving millions of dollars.

For more information about how we can assist you in looking into these technologies for your business, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.

We look forward to your comments.

Posted in Sourcing Safe Foods, Sourcing Safe Products, Uncategorized

The stalemate in Washington resulting in spending cuts could literally make you SICK!

Thursday, March 7th, 2013

Today’s rant is by Ronald D. Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing!

We (I am positive that I am speaking for almost everyone) are all extremely tired of the partisan politics that are playing themselves out in Washington D.C. We are all inundated daily with related information which is more focused on a group of adults trying to get along, than doing what it is we elected them to do. We see this play out daily on TV, in newspapers, on the internet and if we manage to turn on the radio in our car between appointments, we hear it there too. This in and of itself can make one sick.

However, I am writing about another type of sickness, one that can make the general population extremely ill (food borne illness) and in severe cases can result in death. You might be asking at this point what the heck does this have to do with procurement. The answer is a lot, think food safety programs; which are part of most companies corporate social responsibility initiatives (CSR) and driven by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) and Safe Quality Foods (SQF). For retail companies that sell repackaged foods, and for hospitality organizations  that prepare and serve food to the general public from quick service to fine dining establishments as well as  the suppliers and distributors that source it and provide it to them for use. This process is a huge undertaking for these companies and requires government support.

I was checking out Reuters earlier today and came across a piece by  Charles Abbott titled “USDA chief says meat inspector furloughs still months away” What’s scary is that  Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the furloughs to take place later this year might only be 11-12 days for meat inspectors. The Obama administration says it could be as many as 15 days. If this were to include all 8400 inspectors, that would be up to 126,000 days or 345 man years.  That’s a lot of work inspecting or reporting on inspections that is not going to be done at a time of the year consumption trends up because of the upcoming holidays. The numbers sound a lot scarier when you look at them this way. So here’s to our collective health.

If you’d like to learn more about how SafeSourcing supports safety in the procurement process, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services account manager.

We look forward to and appreciate your support.

 

Posted in Sourcing Safe Foods

The pilgrims also ate a lot of seafood during their Thanksgiving festival.

Thursday, November 22nd, 2012

I was watching television report lat night about the safety of gulf seafood as a result of the BP oil spill from last year. Don’t worry, most of our seafood comes from elsewhere.

Do you ever wonder where the sea and lake food that you eat comes from and whether or not it is safe to eat? Are the seafood buyers at your local grocery or restaurant concerned for you?

Almost three years ago during my first post I promised that The SafeSourcing Blog would call attention to and comment on safety concerns within the global supply chain that may impact your customers, employees, families and other stake holders. I’m sure like me; many of you have been impacted by safety inconsistencies in our supply chain. Personally I have had issues like this impact me, members of my family and my pets.

I recently was watching a little snippet from YouTube attributed to ABC News about the origin and quality or lack there of regarding seafood we consume. As a kid growing up on the east coast near Cape Cod I kind of always assumed that all fish was fresh fish from our Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf waters. Well today, more than 80% of our seafood comes from foreign countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, China and Costa Rica to name a few. Of this, only 1% is tested by the FDA and most of it fails inspection because it includes chemicals, poisons, antibiotics and other additives and is even in some cases farmed in unsanitary conditions. The primary reason for the import to locally fished discrepancy is as you might suspect; price.

This author would hope that all seafood and lake food buyers for our restaurant and grocery chains would ask their suppliers a few of simple questions.
 
1. Where is the seafood you are selling us coming from?
2. Where will the incoming shipments be tested before you deliver it to us?
3. Is it safe for our consumers to eat this fish?

If the answer is not to your liking and documented, don’t buy it. Your consumers will thank you.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in B2b Supply Chain, Sourcing Safe Foods, Supply Chain Procurement

So what has really changed in Washington?

Friday, November 16th, 2012

That line is from a previous post by this author in February of 2009 titled Change comes to Washington. Well, not so much it appears.

I guess that open to review does not necessarily mean change. We all review things all of the time, but unless we take action by making a decision, nothing changes. In this case inaction can lead to illness and death.

I was watching the news last night and caught some of FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg’s comments during testimony regarding the contaminated steroids shots from the New England Compounding Center that has made over 400 people sick and resulted in 32 deaths. This brings back bad memories from four and five years ago regarding salmonella outbreaks. Although it appears to me that this situation should be more controllable. During questioning, it was curious to me that the FDA wanted to deflect ownership of the problem to a State organization. This even though there have been inspections by the FDA and a desire to close this facility for as much as 10 years. Where is the ownership here? Where is the executive that steps up and says there is a problem that needs to be fixed ASAP?

Food and Product Safety was supposedly a priority during the 2008 election campaign. It should have been during the 2012 campaign and yet more Americans have died while hundreds of others have been become sick.

In my post from February of 2009, I stated that over 550 people have been taken ill and as many as eight people had died from a salmonella outbreak. That was the 2nd largest outbreak in decades trailing only the prior year’s outbreak associated with tomatoes and peppers which affected over 1000 people. So here we are four years later, and our government is arguing over who is responsible. That makes me sick and is not the kind of change we deserve.

If you’d like to learn more about sourcing safe products, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services representative.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in Sourcing Safe Foods, Sourcing Safe Products

Food Prices to Source in 2013!

Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

Today’s post is by Mark Davis; Sr. Vice President of Operations and CTO at SafeSourcing

2012 brought the Midwest one of the worst droughts since 1936.  The drought coupled with other affected sources of food throughout the world has Rabobank, a leading agricultural investment house predicting massive increases in food prices by June of 2013, specifically in meat and dairy products where shortages in feed will require farmers to greatly reduce their livestock inventory leading to shortages next year.

With so many companies being dependent on the cost of food in their offering, increased food costs will lead these companies to make other adjustments in their business to help balance the increases out.  Today we will take a look at a few of the strategies companies will be using in 2013 to help control their costs.

Re-evaluating all vendor deals – As vendors begin to enter 2013 and begin to think of how they can begin to balance out upcoming food price increases they will have to begin examining all of the current contracts and agreements they have in place especially those that are getting ready to expire in the next 6 months.  Many of these agreements have been in place for several years and have the potential to be improved even if the incumbent ends up winning the business.

Repair Vs. New – In a recent article on the Foodservice Equipment and Supplies website results of a survey to operators in the industry, 68% of the respondents stated that rising food costs would limit their ability to buy equipment and 98% stated that they repaired instead of purchased new equipment in 2012.   With a move to repair instead of replace, many companies will be searching for quality companies who can make the repairs they need in a timely manner in a way that will not cost them more money than purchasing new equipment would have.

Product mix – Another thing that will change for suppliers in 2013 will be a re-evaluation of the product mix that they offer their clients.  As prices of some products increase, leveraging other that aren’t increasing as much will be a key for many companies and understanding the companies that offer these products will be a key to changing their mix in a way that continues to satisfy their own customers.

Energy Saving Measures – Along with food costs, fuel costs are always one of the most watched indexes on the market as the ups and downs of that market affect so many things.  As food prices climb in 2013 companies will look to reduce another of their major costs by looking in energy saving measures, services and products that will help them manage their expenses.  Many companies will look to fuel saving equipment, 3rd party energy reduction consultants, and energy savings policy changes to help them reduce this expense category.

When faced with uncontrollable expense/cost increases learning how to reduce costs in other ways is a critical piece of successful business.  For more information on how SafeSourcing can help you with this process, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  

We look forward to your comments.

Posted in Sourcing Safe Foods, Sourcing Safe Products, Sourcing Strategy

A new study links BPA to obesity in kids! What a shame!

Wednesday, September 19th, 2012

As you all know, I have been a critic of how slowly the FDA has responded to the many concerns raised about BPA or Bisphenol A.

In an article by Genevra Pittman for Reuters Health on Tue Sep 18, 2012  titled Study links BPA, obesity in kids indicates that kids and teens that had higher levels of the chemical bisphenol A in their urine were more likely to be overweight or obese, in a new nationally-representative U.S. study.

In one of my recent posts titled A day late and a dollar short! The FDA announces no more BPA in Baby Bottles on July 19th of this year, I was critical of how long the government takes to make decisions  that other countries have made more quickly. This is a perfect example of newer findings that continue to support the fact that the FDA should have acted faster regardless of whether or not more study continues to be required to support the study.

This issue should also raise a red flag for procurement knowledge workers that buying products for their customers includes much more than just sourcing the finished goods. As an example when sourcing private label products, the formulary for over the counter pain relief is important, but so is the formulary that goes into the packing. How often do your buyers and category managers focus on that?

If you want to make sure that the products you buy for resale are as safe as possible, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services representative.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in Sourcing Safe Foods, Sourcing Safe Products

Mangoes in the news? This is bananas.

Tuesday, September 4th, 2012

Today’s post is from Dave Wenig, Manager of Customer Services at SafeSourcing.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), www.cdc.gov, there have been plenty of investigated outbreaks of salmonella of various strains already in 2012. The latest of these outbreaks came from mangoes and seems to be getting under control.

On Wednesday, August 29, 2012, Splendid Products issued a voluntary recall of Daniella Brand Mangoes due to a “possible health risk.” See the Splendid Products website for more information. ww.splendidmangos.com

This author was really pleased to find so much public safety information available to consumers on the Splendid Products website. If all companies took such an approach to food safety, the number of people affected by these types of outbreaks might be reduced significantly.

As always, www.safesourcing.com features a scrolling marquis that features safety information relative to consumer products. Clicking on this marquis will direct you to even more information about the scrolling topics.

Public safety is always in the mind of SafeSourcing and should be treated as a primary responsibility for all companies.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in Sourcing Safe Foods, Sourcing Safe Products, Sourcing Strategy

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