On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 14:10:26 -0700, "<RJ>" <[email hidden]>
Quoted message said:We were talking about the latest recall of chili products.
"Discard all cans made in Alabama by so-and-so."
To prove a point, my wife brought out
a half-dozen items from the pantry.
In spite of the chemistry lists, nutrients, vitamins,
various logos from the heart assn. etc.....
we couldn't find the SOURCE of any of the products.
"Distributed by....."
"Marketed by...."
"Packed expressedly for...."
When did this come about ?
When I was a kid, every product proudly listed
the location where it was produced.
How do we go back to this ?
We don't. When we were kids, products were manufactured and sold by
the same company. Birdseye bought, processed, froze, packaged,
marketed, and shipped green beans for Birdseye and no one else. Then
companies started making extra money by selling their extra processing
capability to private labels. Then to reduce their overhead, some
major brands sold their processing plants to private companies and
contracted with them to produce their goods. Those private companies
expanded and now do nothing but manufacture for other companies. It's
too expensive for one company to can their own green beans, then shift
over to their own peas, then their own tomatoes. So a cannery might
can green beans for twenty or more different labels, sometimes
changing only the label on the package, sometimes adjusting the recipe
(and the cost). Then they switch over to peas and can peas for thirty
labels, then tomatoes for forty labels, and so on. Some canneries have
equipment so specialized they don't can anything but, say, tomatoes,
year round. Your local grocer has its own brand of canned green beans.
I guarantee your local grocer does not own a cannery. Let somebody
else worry about facilities, employees, unions, benefits, regulations
etc. All your local grocer wants is a case of green beans it can
undercut Del Monte with. It started with your local grocery, then many
of the national brands switched to the same strategy. Your local
grocer and Del Monte might be buying green beans from the same
cannery.
