Archive for the ‘Sourcing Safe Foods’ Category

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How socially focused or responsible is your company.

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

Well if that’s the case why not apply for B Corporation certification. In essence this would be putting your money where your mouth is. At this point there are no real hard financial incentives for a company to do this. At least four states  have passed or proposed B Corp legislation, but it is pretty clear that all will in the future.

So just what is a B CORP? I’m glad you asked. If you visit the Certified B Corporation website you’ll learn that Certified B Corporations are a new type of corporation which uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.  B Corps are unlike traditional businesses because they:
        • Meet comprehensive and transparent social and environmental    performance standards;
        • Meet higher legal accountability standards;
        • Build business constituency for good business

SafeSourcing is going to add B Corporation certification to our database of supplier certifications and ask companies our customers’ partner with what their plans are to achieve B Corp Certification as part of their current or future CSR initiatives. We do the same for over 30 other certifications today such as Eco Logo, SQF and LEED.

If we do a small part and our customers do a small part and their suppliers do a small part, the parts will add up. Pay it forward and do your part.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Ron Southard CEO SafeSourcing

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

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

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 yesterdays post  “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.

We look forward to and appreciates your comments.

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Buyers; Do you need a great place to research product quality and recall issues?

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death from thousands of types of consumer products under the agency’s jurisdiction. The CPSC is committed to protecting consumers and families from products that pose a fire, electrical, chemical, or mechanical hazard or can injure children. The CPSC’s work to ensure the safety of consumer products – such as toys, cribs, power tools, cigarette lighters, and household chemicals – contributed significantly to the 30 percent decline in the rate of deaths and injuries associated with consumer products over the past 30 years.

 Recalls and Product Safety News can be found at the CPSC’s website and can be searched using a number of categories, dates and other criteria such as those below.

1. Recall Number
2. Company
3. Product Type
4. Product Description
5. Hazard
6. Country/Administrative Area of Manufacture
7. Recall Date
8. UPC

You don’t always have to buy something in order to get your job done. Sometimes just knowing where to find the information can be the hardest part of your job. Now you have one fewer places to look.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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How difficult is food safety?

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

You can?t open up your browser or turn a page in a local or national newspaper without reading about some food borne illness issue followed by some official saying we have to get a handle on this. Most of these illnesses are lumped into the food poisoning category. Some are bacterial and others virus related.

The bacteria and viruses most frequently associated with food poisoning cases in the United States are Salmonella, Botulism, Norovirus,Vibrio Infections, Listeria, Hepatitis A, B.cereus, E.coli and Campylobacter. To this author all of these names are pretty scary and many have resulted in death.

There are dozens of trade organizations, programs within those organizations, standards and governments focused on Food Safety. And we still end up with outbreaks like we are seeing in Europe.??

If I were to try and define food safety, a simple definition would be that it is a scientific discipline describing the handling, preparation, and storage of food in ways that prevent food borne illness. This includes a number of routines that should be followed to avoid potentially severe health hazards. Food can transmit disease from person to person as well as serve as a growth medium for bacteria that can cause food poisoning.

Isn?t too bad it?s not that easy. Unfortunately, Food Safety seems to be proverbial camel???? created by a committee trying to design a horse.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Understanding the complexity of food born illness!

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

Food born illness has had a lot of recent press, there are however more than 160 foods that can cause serious allergic reactions that also require procurement professionals awareness and education.

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.
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Milk
Eggs
Fish (e.g., bass, flounder, cod)
Crustacean shellfish (e.g. crab, lobster, shrimp)
Tree nuts (e.g., almonds, walnuts, pecans)
Peanuts
Wheat
Soybeans
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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
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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

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A cold cut or a burnt at the steak. This sounds more like a Knight’s tale than a food safety initiative.

Friday, May 6th, 2011

There was an article in today’s MONEY section of USA TODAY by Elizabeth Weise titled “CDC: Over 50? Heat those cold cuts to 165º”. The sub title indicated the Goal is to cut the risk of listeria bacteria. Without getting into the article which contains some great educaional content, these are the recommendations of the CDC and have been for some time.

This author used to love fried bologna sandwiches with yellow mustard as a kid and when I lived in St. Louis I would buy a hot salami sandwich from a deli on The Hill. However, I ate them on the spot. Have you ever friend bologna and then put it in a sandwich to take to work or have your child take to school. Does the word hockey puck or shoe leather or jerky mean anything to you?

The idea behind a cold cut is that it is cold. How about figuring out a way to eliminate the risk of Listeria in cold cuts instead of changing the way the product has been used since its inception.  In yesterdays post “What is the financial impact of food-borne illnesses”   Listeria was one of the top 10 pathogens that collectively cost us $8B a year.

When I used to visit New York City on business, I loved to eat at Katz’s Deli and still do and will continue to. Above the counter hung a sign that read “Send a salami to your boy in the army” I was told this was from World War II but is still done today. I guess they are going to have to add something to the sign now that says cook before shipping so this can be used as a baseball bat.

Come On. Let’s figure out how to fix the problem without ruining the product.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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What is the financial impact of food-borne illnesses?

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

One thing we have learned or at least taken a step towards understanding is the financial impact of these types of events. The Emerging Pathogens Institute of the University of Florida has issued a Report that indentifies the top 10 pathogen-food combinations that cause illness in the U.S. annually as well as their financial impact. Salmonella is the leading pathogen and the culprit in the recent tomato recall costing $3B per year. According to the report the top 10 pathogens cost us $8B per year.

This author believes you could actually triple those numbers as most cases of simple diarrhea and vomiting never make there way to the hospital or other medical centers, but do in fact cause loss of work, productivity and wages. $24B is a big number.

The lesson hear is that we have still not solved the food-borne issue illness or the farm to fork issue that requires a supply chain that is traceable to it’s original source. Until we do, what goes around will continue to come around and the costs will continue to go up.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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What are we learning about food safety?

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

Yesterday Taylor Farms Pacific, Inc., a California-based food supplier for a number of retail companies announced the recall of grape tomatoes produced by one of their growers based on a possible salmonella contamination.

Here’s the title of a post from three years ago on cherry tomatoes which are basically the same product, “I say Tomato, and you say Tomah to. I ate some last night”!

So the question is what have we learned and how has it been applied to these products. Food recalls cost money. They create lost revenue for retailers and lost work hours for consumers affected by the illness they cause.

If you are a retailer or a supplier affected by these recalls and you want to improve performance, give SafeSourcing a call.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Getting to know the Organizations Helping to Protect Us – Part 4 of 4

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

For more than 20 years, Ecologo has been working diligently to certify products all over the world that meet strict standards for leading the way in environmental responsibility.

Founded in Canada in 1988, Ecologo is only one of two North American eco-labeling programs approved by GEN as meeting internationally recognized ISO 14024 requirement and has certified thousands of products, creating one of the world’s largest pool of sustainable products.

Like many organizations of its type, Ecologo goes beyond just ensuring that companies who want to be certified are following the guidelines set, but they also play a huge part in marketing those companies and products to the world so that people and companies can choose to align themselves with companies who show a bigger accountability to this planet than just making money.

Extremely active, in just the month of April alone, Ecologo announced certification of new printer cartridges and standards for ink and toner, household cleaners and copy paper.   You can read more about these press releases at http://www.environmentalchoice.com/en/inthenews/pressreleases.

For more information about how you can ensure that you are including companies and products who have been certified by organizations such as Ecologo, the Marine Stewardship Council, the Gluten Free Certification Organization, and the Forest Stewardship Council, please contact a SafeSourcing customer service representative today.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Getting to Know the Organizations Helping to Protect Us – Part 3 of 4

Friday, April 29th, 2011

In a series where we are looking at some of the organizations out there that are working hard to protect our planet, we focus today on the Marine Stewardship Council.

Founded in 1997 by the World Wide Fund for Nature and Unilever, this organization works with seafood manufacturers to produce products based on principles of sustainability with their vision of “the world’s oceans teeming with life, and seafood supplies safeguarded for this and future generations.” (http://www.msc.org/about-us/vision-mission)

What makes this organization so special is that they have a mindset that goes beyond just certifying products and companies; they truly want to influence the way people see, purchase, and consume products so that entities with good fishing practices are rewarded and moved to the forefront of the industry.

Their programs to educate the public, businesses, fisheries and even developing countries to ensure we as a planet continue to move towards sustainable seafood practices are known and recognized throughout the world.

For more information on the more than 9,000 products and companies who have been certified, the 104 certified fisheries or the retailers and restaurants who support the MSC programs, visit their website at http://www.msc.org/

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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