With all this cold weather, I hear the crematoriums are struggling to cope with the workload.................................... ..................I wonder what will be the next thing.........OAPasties? AL
If the supermarkets cannot keep track of verifiable issues like whether products contain beef, pork or horse, then we can take it that labelling on non-verifiable issues like: * organic * sustainable * free-range * halal * GMO free etc is simply made up as a marketing tool. Does anybody believe any of this stuff?
And even more to the point, if you put your brand on something and then have no policy in place for checking on what you are actually selling, and didn't even make it in the first place, what good is your brand? The whole point of brands is that they are supposed to be a quality guarantee. You are meant to trust the brand through personal experience, reputation etc. A brand that doesn't do due diligence is not one that is worth paying for. Findus in this case has been happy to stick its logo on stuff that it didn't make (although consumers probably thought that it did) and didn't even check or test. That would imply to me that that particular brand is history. Anyone can print a logo on a cardboard box. In the mid-80s I worked for John West, the salmon people. It was a couple of years after they had poisoned some OAPs with botulism which killed them. Sales naturally had been through the floor for a couple of years. But the Q&A at John West was strengthened to the most amazing limits as a result. Before you could buy a tin of John West tuna, the cannery that wanted to sell it to JW had to fill in a questionnaire on it's production practices. On the basis of the answers, it was either thanks but no thanks, or a visit from the inspection team - wherever in the world the cannery was located. After the visit, the cannery was either failed, passed or passed subject to the improvement of a raft of processes (which might even involve new buildings). In fact, no cannery was ever passed without something needing to be changed. Once the cannery had achieved supplier status (and the JW controls were so strict that their approval was considered the industry benchmark), every container of goods supplied by the cannery was inspected. 600 cans had their labels stripped and the cans checked for spurs and other faults. A certain number were opened for sampling. If a tiny number displayed faults, a further 600 cans were checked. If more faults were found, the entire container was rejected and sent back to the supplier. This was quite routine. I remember the anchovy supplier in Sicily having about 4 consignments sent back one after the other. Maybe a long story. But some companies are serious about their brands, and some clearly aren't.
There's never been any question raised about the quality of the products, just the ingredients. And in all honesty I reckon horse meat is tastier anyway.
Since horsemeat is more expensive than beef, I hear the supermarkets will be putting up their prices to suit.
Nope! I don't even know if the definitions are consistently applied across retailers, let alone whether they conform to them.
if Findus had said that they her out horse meat in their products i might have bought them...i dont really processed foods...i think the last macdonalds i had was several years ago... as regards brands..i think anyone who trusts a certain brand is being quite naive...the bottom line is all companies want to make a profit. they all dance the fine between truth and fiction, quality and shite..this is where the advertising and marketing come in..stupid rubbish like happy Meals and the Lynx effect..people fall for this nonsense...put it in a waitrose box and you can stick 25% on top, put a Dior label on it and you can bump it up by 500%..same crap, different day.. exercise your common sense..the main reason a car or bike company will do a recall (if they bother at all...hello citroen and your iffy parking brake), is primarily to prevent litigation and 'protect' the brand..not because they give a monkeys about the consumer.
I gave up with worrying about brands after nothing ever happened after a Badedas bath (I was 10 and switched to Matey)
