According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) there are more than 160 foods that can cause allergic reactions in people with food allergies, the law identifies the eight most common allergenic foods. These foods account for 90 percent of food allergic reactions, and are the food sources from which many other ingredients are derived. Some of these products have been in the news recently for other issues in the food safety area.

The law requires that the following eight foods be indentified as allergenic.

Milk
Eggs
Fish
Crustacean shellfish
Tree nuts
Peanuts
Wheat
Soybeans

These eight foods, and any ingredient that contains protein derived from one or more of them, are designated as “major food allergens” by the law.

The law also requires that food labels identify the food source of all major food allergens. It must be included in one of two ways. The name of the food source of a major food allergen must appear in parentheses following the name of the ingredient. By example, “lecithin (soy),” “flour (wheat),” and “whey (milk)” or immediately after or next to the list of ingredients in a “contains” statement. By example, “Contains Wheat, Milk, and Soy.”

The symptoms of food allergies can appear within a few minutes or up to two hours after a person has eaten the food to which he or she is allergic. Some of these symptoms can be similar to food poisoning or food born illness symptoms.

Hives
Flushed skin or rash
Tingling or itchy sensation in the mouth
Face, tongue, or lip swelling
Vomiting and/or diarrhea
Abdominal cramps
Coughing or wheezing
Dizziness and/or lightheadedness
Swelling of the throat and vocal cords
Difficulty breathing
Loss of consciousness

It’s important to read the food labeling if you are sensitive to these or other food groups and avoid those allergens in question.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments

According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) there are more than 160 foods that can cause allergic reactions in people with food allergies, the law identifies the eight most common allergenic foods. These foods account for 90 percent of food allergic reactions, and are the food sources from which many other ingredients are derived. Some of these products have been in the news recently for other issues in the food safety area.

The law requires that the following eight foods be indentified as allergenic.

Milk
Eggs
Fish
Crustacean shellfish
Tree nuts
Peanuts
Wheat
Soybeans

These eight foods, and any ingredient that contains protein derived from one or more of them, are designated as “major food allergens” by the law.

The law also requires that food labels identify the food source of all major food allergens. It must be included in one of two ways. The name of the food source of a major food allergen must appear in parentheses following the name of the ingredient. By example, “lecithin (soy),” “flour (wheat),” and “whey (milk)? or immediately after or next to the list of ingredients in a “contains” statement. By example, “Contains Wheat, Milk, and Soy.”

The symptoms of food allergies can appear within a few minutes or up to two hours after a person has eaten the food to which he or she is allergic. Some of these symptoms can be similar to food poisoning or food born illness symptoms.

Hives
Flushed skin or rash
Tingling or itchy sensation in the mouth
Face, tongue, or lip swelling
Vomiting and/or diarrhea
Abdominal cramps
Coughing or wheezing
Dizziness and/or lightheadedness
Swelling of the throat and vocal cords
Difficulty breathing
Loss of consciousness

It?s important to read the food labeling if you are sensitive to these or other food groups and avoid those allergens in question.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments

A friend of mine from japan sent me two articles this past week relative to Mars the owner of the Mars, M&M and Snickers brands behavior in sourcing their cocoa and their responsibility to be socially aware and environmentally friendly.

No one would blame food companies during the worst global economy in over 75 years if they tried to cut corners and buy less expensive goods and services.

This author has posted several times on the emerging standard of TBL. For those of you that are not aware of it, please read on and ask yourself what your company is doing in this area. A Mars spokesperson goes on to say that their employees and consumers expect them to do the right thing. So do the stake holders in all companies. Mars gives us a great view of how the business world can be.

The triple bottom line (or “TBL”, “3BL”, or “people, planet, profit”) captures an expanded spectrum of values and criteria for measuring organizational (and societal) success: economic, ecological and social. With the ratification of the United Nations and ICLEI TBL standard for urban and community accounting in early 2007, this became the dominant approach to public sector full cost accounting. Similar UN standards apply to natural capital and human capital measurement to assist in measurements required by TBL, e.g. the eco Budget standard for reporting ecological footprint.

In the private sector, a commitment to corporate social responsibility implies a commitment to some form of TBL reporting. This is distinct from the more limited changes required to deal only with ecological issues.

Ask how your sourcing partners can help you in this process.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

A friend of mine from japan sent me two articles this past week relative to Mars the owner of the Mars, M&M and Snickers brands behavior in sourcing their cocoa and their responsibility to be socially aware and environmentally friendly.

No one would blame food companies during the worst global economy in over 75 years if they tried to cut corners and buy less expensive goods and services.

This author has posted several times on the emerging standard of TBL. For those of you that are not aware of it, please read on and ask yourself what your company is doing in this area. A Mars spokesperson goes on to say that their employees and consumers expect them to do the right thing. So do the stake holders in all companies. Mars gives us a great view of how the business world can be.

The triple bottom line (or “TBL”, “3BL”, or “people, planet, profit”) captures an expanded spectrum of values and criteria for measuring organizational (and societal) success: economic, ecological and social. With the ratification of the United Nations and ICLEI TBL standard for urban and community accounting in early 2007, this became the dominant approach to public sector full cost accounting. Similar UN standards apply to natural capital and human capital measurement to assist in measurements required by TBL, e.g. the eco Budget standard for reporting ecological footprint.

In the private sector, a commitment to corporate social responsibility implies a commitment to some form of TBL reporting. This is distinct from the more limited changes required to deal only with ecological issues.

Ask how your sourcing partners can help you in this process.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Recalls are actions taken by a firm to remove a product from the market. Recalls may be conducted on a firm’s own initiative, by FDA request, or by FDA order under statutory authority.

? Class I recall: a situation in which there is a reasonable probability that the use of or exposure to a violative product will cause serious adverse health consequences or death.

? Class II recall: a situation in which use of or exposure to a violative product may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences or where the probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote.

? Class III recall: a situation in which use of or exposure to a violative product is not likely to cause adverse health consequences.

? Market withdrawal: occurs when a product has a minor violation that would not be subject to FDA legal action. The firm removes the product from the market or corrects the violation. For example, a product removed from the market due to tampering, without evidence of manufacturing or distribution problems, would be a market withdrawal.

? Medical device safety alert: issued in situations where a medical device may present an unreasonable risk of substantial harm. In some case, these situations also are considered recalls.

We appreciate and look forward to your comments.

Are companies and their buyers really looking for suppliers with Green products? Are suppliers rushing to include these products and services as part of their standard offerings?

Companies continue to look for ways to differentiate themselves as they practice more socially responsible ways to run their businesses whether they are supplier or a buyer. We know companies are leaning heavily on their green product offerings, initiatives, and other programs as a key differentiator today and in the future.

For those companies that are more talk than walk, please consider the following in your approach to improve your entire CSR focus.

Nine steps to safer and more eco-friendly procurement

1. Be pro-active in driving not for resale and for resale product safety within your company, and also supporting eco-standards in the procurement process.
2. Pay it forward with all of your trading partners by sharing what you are doing, and asking what they do to support yours or similar initiatives of their own.
3. Educate your employees and trading partners about common safety standards and guidelines such as the SQF Certificate www.sqfi.com and the Global Food Safety Initiative www.ciesnet.com.
4. Educate your employees and trading partners about common eco-standards such as Green- Energy National Standard www.green-e.org or EcoLogo www.ecologo.org.
5. Point associates and trading partners to free educational websites such as www.safesourcing.com to use their free SafeSourcing Wiki or the Sourcebook professional social network for procurement professionals.
6. Only use trading partners that follow your lead.
7. Train your team to understand and use all available tools that insure supply chain safety such the free daily safety in sourcing blog at www.safesourcing.com or the low cost SafeSourceIt Supplier Database and Reverse Auction Tools.
8. Write it down and then impose a system of measures and controls to monitor performance against clearly defined goals.
9. Start at the top and engage all levels of your company.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments

With the new administrations increased focus on food safety more and more groups are entering the fray every day. Why should those in the retail supply chain be concerned?

I received the following email from the Consumers Union today relative to food safety and specifically speaking to those that have suffered from food poisoning in the past.

Dear Ron,
You may be familiar with case of actor Dennis Quaid, whose infant twins almost died when they were injected with a massive dose of blood thinner.

The email went on to provide a link to a specific set of questions relative to my experiencing an illness in the past related to something I ate and inviting me to share my story:

To wit. Have you or a loved one become ill with food poisoning? We would like to hear your story. You are not alone — approximately one in four Americans acquire a food borne illness every year! For some people food poisoning has drastic consequences – each year some 325,000 are hospitalized

This author has written frequently about this subject and the potential negative impact that a lack of focus or mistakes in food safety can have on a company?s net earnings as well as consumer confidence. The retail supply chain requires tools that provide traceable data that includes everything from the farm to the fork.

We look forward to and appreciate your opinion.

In yesterdays post we discussed sourcing strategies versus tactics

In the retail vertical let?s start implementing specific short term tactics that can drive immediate results…

A great example of the above might be augmenting the manual process that many retail sourcing professionals use today to find new sources of supply interested in bidding for their business rather than continuing to live with the same small, known group of suppliers they have used for years. Historically this has been a very time consuming practice that results in few if any new sources of supply. This represents a great opportunity to deploy a tactic that can have an immediate impact for an organization without the need for the implementation of a complete new sourcing strategy.

There is a specific process to follow that will encourage new sources of supply to want to bid for a companies business beyond just being invited. Simply having your buyer assigned the task of picking up the phone and calling new sources of supply will not result in new suppliers agreeing to bid for your business. There are specific objections to overcome and questions to answer that require a specific skill set. This is a perfect opportunity for Software as a Service implementations of supplier research. Skilled providers in this area can provide companies with as many as a half dozen or more willing new sources of supply in as little as thirty minutes that may in fact reside within a companies existing zip code or area code.

Sourcing tactics can be isolated procurement related actions or events that take advantage of opportunities offered by the gaps within strategic plan such as lack of new sources of supply mentioned above. So our tactic here would be to find additional sources of supply that we can invite to compete for a companies business in a variety of categories. The fact is that additional sources of supply competing for a companies business results in compressed pricing and often better quality products. There are also an optimal number of suppliers that will encourage the optimal results.

We appreciate and look forward to your comments.

Let?s stop all of the chatter about strategic sourcing in the retail vertical and start implementing specific short term tactics that can drive immediate results…

A strategy is simply a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. In the case of strategic sourcing, the simple goal should be to buy the best product (quality) at the best price and labor optimization (total cost) from the best suppliers (standards).

A lot of conversation takes place on a regular basis in the procurement space relative to the number of manual processes that remain in place in the retail vertical relative to the RFX process. To be sure, this is true. It does not mean however that retail organizations do not have a strategy as to how they choose to source. For example, the goal of a company may be to improve net profits: the strategy chosen might be to undertake an advertising campaign; invest in a new computer system; or reduce costs in order to adjust consumer pricing.

This author does not believe that just automating the RFX and other procurement processes results in a strategic sourcing initiative that will be successful. Having a central repository for contracts, RFI?s, RFP?s and RFQ?s does not mean the tool will be used in its entirety or properly. In fact, more times than not companies revert to using their time honored processes and adjusting new tools to fit their comfort level.

Enter the specific tactic. Ah yes, the tactical plan that delivers the strategic plan. Not exactly. Tactics may describe specific actions taken for a specific area and can certainly be accomplished without a strategic sourcing plan in place.

Tomorrow we will review the specific tactic of developing new sources of supply

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.