Although we tend to think of E.coli as coming specifically from meat products, only 45% of documented outbreaks during the last eighteen years were attributed to food.

A USA TODAY article in Money section by Julie Schmit titled “Little-Known E.coli strain starts gaining notoriety “discusses just how little the general public knows about E. coli.

The above referenced article goes on to discuss the most common type of E.coli, which is E. coli 0157:H7. Most of us are aware of this strain which was responsible for the recall of thirty million pounds of meat in 2007. This strain was also believed to be responsible for the spinach outbreak during 2006. Another strain E.coli 0111 is beginning to gain notoriety which the USDA may begin to testing within months. Although the reactions to this and other non 0157 strains may be milder, they may in fact be responsible for a variety of illnesses that were not thought to be E.coli originally.

What procurement professionals can do to make sure they have the necessary safeguards in place when buying meat products is to check the certifications their incumbent or future suppliers have on file? These may differ depending on the country of origin. Certainly SQF and GFSI certifications should be in place. Other potential certifications might include ISO 22000 as well as American Humane Certified, Certified Humane Raised & Handled and others. SafeSourcing includes these data in our supplier database as well as the most recent certification dates and other practices that suppliers and processors may have in place that will mitigate risk that could lead to the cause of future outbreaks.

While meat products were a major contributor, other areas causing outbreaks were person to person contact, lake water and animal contact.

We look forward to your comments.

China plans to trace every link from the farm to the dinner table. This should be applauded and become the rallying point for a global effort.

I was reading the Arizona Republic this morning and came across a small update titled “China vows overhaul of Dairy Industry”. In the update China’s cabinet vowed to a complete overhaul of their scandal-ridden dairy industry, pledging to inspect every link from the farm to the dinner table. China went on to comment that the industry was “chaotic” and acknowledge there was a lack of over site.

The good news is that China has acknowledged there is a problem. This author might find “chaotic” slightly inappropriate phraseology in light of the fact that infants ended up dying and thousands upon thousands became ill. I do however agree with the farm to dinner table concept of traceability and might even go as far as suggesting a two step process of “seed to crop” and then “farm to dinner table” may be even more appropriate. As I have discussed in other posts, I do not feel that one forward one back traceability as is presently being pursued is enough to insure rapid detection and resolution of food born illnesses such as ecoli, salmonella and listeria among many others.

This is an important subject area that requires efforts beyond industry groups and trade organizations.

I look forward to your comments

China plans to trace every link from the farm to the dinner table. This should be applauded and become the rallying point for a global effort.

I was reading the Arizona Republic this morning and came across a small update titled “China vows overhaul of Dairy Industry”. In the update China?s cabinet vowed to a complete overhaul of their scandal-ridden dairy industry, pledging to inspect every link from the farm to the dinner table. China went on to comment that the industry was ?chaotic? and acknowledge there was a lack of over site.

The good news is that China has acknowledged there is a problem. This author might find ?chaotic? slightly inappropriate phraseology in light of the fact that infants ended up dying and thousands upon thousands became ill. I do however agree with the farm to dinner table concept of traceability and might even go as far as suggesting a two step process of ?seed to crop? and then ?farm to dinner table? may be even more appropriate. As I have discussed in other posts, I do not feel that one forward one back traceability as is presently being pursued is enough to insure rapid detection and resolution of food born illnesses such as ecoli, salmonella and listeria among many others.

This is an important subject area that requires efforts beyond industry groups and trade organizations.

I look forward to your comments

As a follow up to this blog title, here?s a food safety question for our readers. Just what is considered safe?

Food additives have always been an issue for food safety officials. This author applauds the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for their stance on melamine in baby formula. But enough is enough already.

According to the FDA, no level of the chemical melamine is acceptable in baby formula. We could not agree more! However, in other foods tiny amounts such as 2.5 parts per million (ppm) is considered acceptable. Are you kidding me? How many parents would knowingly let there babies drink formula that contains any melamine. My guess is none if they knew it contained this industrial (not food) product. Let?s review; melamine is an industrial product that can mimic protein content when it is added to food products. In large quantities it can be fatal. In fact the cause of this particular FDA announcement is a result of the Chinese milk scandal that has sickened fifty three thousand infants and KILLED four because of this additive.

If small amounts are ok, who is going to monitor the amounts? If 2.5 parts per million is ok, what happens if there are 5 parts per million or 10 parts per million. Is there a cumulative affect as there is with lead. Will signage be displayed that indicates that a product contains small amounts of melamine? If so, how many consumers would buy the product? I?m pretty sure the answer is ZERO.

This author believes that zero tolerance is the right policy relative to fillers, additives and other products that are not intended nor were developed for inclusion in food. I also believe it is incumbent upon retail suppliers to disclose this information as well as at least 3 to 4 levels of traceability for the products they supply.

We look forward to your comments.

Both presidential campaigns are touting their plan for reduction in prescription drug costs as a significant benefit of their platform for change. Retailers have been doing this for years. Come on guys let?s come up with something new.

Both presidential campaigns promise to make low cost prescription drug availability a priority of their improvement strategy for health care plans. Neither McCain nor Obama has detailed how they would accomplish this against the largest and most powerful of lobby?s in the capital.

It is no surprise to anyone that prescription drugs are one of the fastest growing health care costs in the United States. We pay the highest prices in the world for brand-name drugs. Retailers have been dealing with this issue for years and unlike our presidential candidates have come up with a variety of strategies and programs in order to save consumers money.

It?s about time that the government caught on to what retailers have already been doing for over two years. In September of 2006, Wal-Mart announced that it would make nearly 300 generic drugs available for only $4 per prescription for up to a 30-day supply at commonly prescribed dosages. The Wal-Mart plan later drove other retailers to create programs of their own. Target, Meijer, Wegmans, Costco and K-Mart and others have announced similar generic plans. The Wal-mart program since its inception has grown to over 1,000 over the counter medications and claims to have saved consumers over $1 billion.

One way retailers have been able to drive down their costs with generic drugs and other over the counter medications, is to hold the drug manufacturers and other distributers accountable by purchasing their generic drugs through the non biased use of reverse auction tools. History indicates that generic drug events can drive savings greater than thirty percent. Events can be held for dozens of suppliers and hundreds of products at one time and left open for days if not weeks in order to collect pricing prior to the final live auction. The fact is that major pharmaceutical companies use these tools regularly in order to drive down their costs.

Let?s see something unique from our presidential candidates. It makes sense to drive down health care costs, but this seems more like the first president Bush thinking UPC scanners installed in most super markets at the time were cool many years after they were invented.

We look forward to your comments.

How can retailers use the leverage of next generation e-procurement tools to change their financial outlook now?

The key to the above question is the term leverage which suggests that with the same amount of effort more work can be done by using more leverage. Next generation tools use leverage throughout their design to improve on or do more work than original or legacy applications with the same or less effort or resources. One of the most famous quotes relative to leverage is attributed to Archimedes (c. 287 BC ?c. 212BC) who was considered to be one of the greatest mathematicians of all times. The modern version of the quote ?Give me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough; I can single-handed move the world.?

Let?s look at one early generation tool for retailers, the supplier database. The theory was that as an e-sourcing company conducted reverse auctions on behalf of a retailer that the incumbent and other suppliers provided by the retailer would be added to the vendor?s database. If the vendor were successful with multiple retailers, the database would grow over time. There really was no data to support how many suppliers, distributors or manufacturers were required to drive the best reverse auction results for a particular product or service. Other data gathering practices such as phone book searches were used to buffer what was generally accepted as a small source of supply by most retailers. Reverse auction events were run and savings generated, but sustainable results over the long term were limited beyond minor compression due to the lack of new sources of supply. In fact in many cases, retailers were not allowed access to the vendor?s database as it would reveal the actual shortage of suppliers within certain regions and other geographies.

Now let?s apply some leverage to the supplier identification practices with a next generation database that uses modern search techniques and intelligent agents to conduct supplier research. In order to support best practices it is generally accepted that reverse auction events require at least 5 to 8 suppliers to drive the best results. In order to accomplish this, multiple search criteria are required such as country, state, and region; SIC code, zip code and a variety of other related data. The database also needs to have a large number of suppliers so that any category for any region can return at least the number of suppliers to support best practices for auction participation. With today?s tools such as Google, ask.com, search me and boogami and suppliers that are familiar with the reverse auction process it is much easier to build a relational database that can provide supplier data instantly. This saves time, insures success and creates a basis for sustainable process improvement.

So, to paraphrase Archimedes, give us a database large enough and a search tool flexible enough and single-handed a procurement professional can source from the entire world and a lower acquisition prices beginning today.

We look forward to your comments.

It?s taken more than six years for this legislation originally enacted in 2002 as part of the farm bill to take affect. Are we safer than we were six years ago from food born illness?

As we watch the politics of this year?s presidential election, it is easy to understand why this legislation has taken so long to enact. A combination of what has become a process of supporting private interests, lobbying, and the continuation of the frustrating partisan politics that our democratic system has digressed to have conspired to create this six year delay.

Now we can start to discuss the questions of who this affects, who must participate, who pays, why compliance is necessary, where labeling is required and when we can start to look for it.

How will a consumer be able to determine where a product originates? That quite frankly depends on how the retailer chooses to implement the program. If they are required to implement this at all, which some small specialty retailers will not be required to do. At some companies the source may be displayed on a sign. At others it may be displayed by a label on the actual product or both.

In fact the United States and most other North American countries import hundreds of food products from dozens of countries. Some are close neighbors and others are thousands of miles away. Some products are included, others are not. Some products which are required to display labeling when combined with other products that require labeling result in a product that does not require labeling.

This program although a positive step, is just that a step. This author is not sure it will make it any easier to trace food born illness at this point. In this country we often ship products to other countries for processing and return the same product back to the United States the same day. Who is responsible for this labeling?

This author continues to support traceability beyond one forward one back and this process is another step in that process albeit an expensive one with a few to many loopholes.

We look forward to your comments.

Often times, discussions with customers, investors, salespeople and others provide the best source of future blog posts.

This author believes that too many CEO’s and other senior level managers turn down meetings with just about anyone that are not their direct reports, not in their immediate network or a company peer or board member. This is unfortunate as it is one of the best ways to keep up with industry changes and new ideas at the grass root level. I was in a meeting last week when a senior person in the room asked me what Eco meant. I was totally surprised. I was even more surprised when someone else in the room provided the guidance that it meant green.

Quite frankly this encouraged rather than discouraged me because it indicated the level of education that is still required in order to drive ecological focus on our natural or green environment. This also supports that our company is barking up the right tree as it refers to environmentally and safety focused sourcing.

The following paragraphs content is taken from a variety of terms located in Wikipedia and their wiktionary tool.

The prefix eco is used for words relating to the ecology or to the environment. Since it is commonly used in relation to environmental issues ecology often becomes an inaccurate synonym for the environment. Ecosystems, of which there are numerous types and are a defined part of the biosphere, collectively make up the whole of the biosphere. Within an ecosystem there are habitats in which an organism (including humans) exists. At its most natural, an environment would lack any effects of human activity, although the scale of this activity is such that all areas of the Earth have had at least some influence by humans. Green as a term has come to relate to an ideology that places importance on ecological and environmentalist goals.

So, when a company indicates they are Eco focused, they are referring to the highest level of the biosphere in which there are many habitats or environments. In this case they are talking about a particular habitat within the eco system. That which is inhabited and impacted by humans. Introduction of the term green over the years has resulted in indicating that the focus on the environment within the eco system is in the area of the natural environment and humans’ impact on it.

We look forward to your comments.

Often times, discussions with customers, investors, salespeople and others provide the best source of future blog posts.

This author believes that too many CEO?s and other senior level managers turn down meetings with just about anyone that are not their direct reports, not in their immediate network or a company peer or board member. This is unfortunate as it is one of the best ways to keep up with industry changes and new ideas at the grass root level. I was in a meeting last week when a senior person in the room asked me what Eco meant. I was totally surprised. I was even more surprised when someone else in the room provided the guidance that it meant green.

Quite frankly this encouraged rather than discouraged me because it indicated the level of education that is still required in order to drive ecological focus on our natural or green environment. This also supports that our company is barking up the right tree as it refers to environmentally and safety focused sourcing.

The following paragraphs content is taken from a variety of terms located in Wikipedia and their wiktionary tool.

The prefix eco is used for words relating to the ecology or to the environment. Since it is commonly used in relation to environmental issues ecology often becomes an inaccurate synonym for the environment. Ecosystems, of which there are numerous types and are a defined part of the biosphere, collectively make up the whole of the biosphere. Within an ecosystem there are habitats in which an organism (including humans) exists. At its most natural, an environment would lack any effects of human activity, although the scale of this activity is such that all areas of the Earth have had at least some influence by humans. Green as a term has come to relate to an ideology that places importance on ecological and environmentalist goals.

So, when a company indicates they are Eco focused, they are referring to the highest level of the biosphere in which there are many habitats or environments. In this case they are talking about a particular habitat within the eco system. That which is inhabited and impacted by humans. Introduction of the term green over the years has resulted in indicating that the focus on the environment within the eco system is in the area of the natural environment and humans? impact on it.

We look forward to your comments.