ConAgra's Poion Peanut Butter Plant Reopens after 6 Months

a salmonella outbreak that has sickened more than 200 people in 35 states

The following brands and all varieties of frozen pot pie products, including chicken, turkey and beef, are subject to the recall:

· Banquet

· Kroger (sold at King Soopers and City Market)

· Great Value (sold at Wal-Mart nationally)

· Albertson's

· Food Lion

· Hill Country Fare

· Kirkwood

· Meijer

· Western Family

Recalled frozen pot pies include all varieties in 7-ounce single serving packages bearing an establishment number "P-9" or "Est. 1059" printed on the side of the package.

repulsive Corporatist Pigs Who Poison America with Impunity day in and Out suggest you just cook your tainted food better

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a health alert about the problem and ConAgra voluntarily stopped production of the pies. So far, so good. But here's the punchline: "No recall is planned as the company maintains that its pies are safe if cooked properly."
So in case anyone missed it, even if you buy a salmonella-tainted product, all you have to do is cook it long enough and everything will be fine.
These words seem to me less than reassuring since they come from a company that only last year was forced to stop production and recall its peanut butter after 600 were sickened by salmonella contamination. Maybe those 600 "bellyachers" should have just cooked their peanut butter? Is it too much to ask that ConAgra just make uncontaminated food in the first place?
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Food Companies, Including Poison Pot Pie and Peanut Butter People ConAgra, Face U.S. Probe Over Iraq Deals

WASHINGTON -- Prominent American food companies are under scrutiny in a federal probe of possible fraud and corruption in the military's food-supply operations for the Iraq war.

Investigators from the Justice Department and the Defense Department are looking into deals that Perdue Farms Inc., Sara Lee Corp., ConAgra Foods Inc. and other U.S. companies made to supply the military, according to people involved in the inquiry. The companies made the deals with the help of former U.S. military procurement officials they hired as consultants or executives.

The inquiry is focused on whether the food companies set excessively high prices when they sold their goods to the Army's primary food contractor for the war zone, a Kuwaiti firm called Public Warehousing Co. A related question is whether Public Warehousing improperly pocketed for itself refunds it received from these suppliers. Public Warehousing bought vast amounts of meat, vegetables and bakery items from the food companies, and delivered them to U.S. troops.

Public Warehousing's dealings are the subject of "a very large and active investigation into criminal and civil fraud involving amounts in the hundreds of millions of dollars," Justice Department lawyer Brian Mizoguchi told a judge in Federal Claims Court in Washington, D.C., on June 12. Public Warehousing, which receives more than $1 billion annually to feed troops in Iraq and Kuwait, denies wrongdoing.

Federal investigators are also examining the role Army officials played in picking the food companies that are Public Warehousing's suppliers. Once a "prime vendor" is chosen by the Pentagon to deliver the food -- in this case, Public Warehousing -- that vendor receives guidance from the Army on what should be on the menu. Sometimes the Army demands specific brands of food from specific manufacturers. The prime vendor must then negotiate prices for these menu items with these manufacturers.

Profit Margins

In general, many military contracts pay suppliers the cost of the goods they distribute plus a profit margin. In such cases, it is a challenge to ensure that the supplier seeks the lowest price from the maker of the goods. Unless adequate safeguards are in place, the supplier and the maker have an incentive to inflate the cost and share the extra profits among themselves.

Federal law prohibits government contractors from obtaining money through false or fraudulent pretenses.

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What passes for food in America or a list of some ConAgra's Crap

• Act II - Microwave Popcorn
• Andy Capp's fries - flavoured corn and potato snack made to look like French fries.
• Banquet - Frozen chicken and ready-to-heat meals
• Big Mama Sausage - Snack-sized preserved sausages
• Blue Bonnet - Margarine and bread spreads
• Chef Boyardee - Ready-to-eat pasta meals
• Crunch 'n Munch - Snack food
• David Sunflower Seeds - Sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds
• Dennison's - Chili
• Egg Beaters - Processed egg product
• Fiddle Faddle - Snack food
• Fleischmann's - Bread spreads
• Gebhardt - Tex-Mex style foods
• Gilardi Foods - Italian-style foods
• Golden Cuisine - Ready-made food for seniors
• Gulden's - Mustard
• Healthy Choice - Ready-to-eat and prepared foods
• Hebrew National - Kosher sausages, cold cuts and condiments
• Hunt's - Canned tomato products, ketchup and barbecue sauce
• Hunt's Snack Pack Pudding - Shelf-stable pudding
• J. Hungerford Smith - Dessert ingredients for restaurants
• Jiffy Pop - Popcorn
• Kid Cuisine - Prepared foods for children
• Knott's Berry Farm - Jams and jellies
• La Choy - Chinese-style foods
• Lamb Weston Inland Valley - Consumer sales of frozen potato products
• Lightlife - Vegetarian meat product substitutes
• Luck's - Canned baked beans
• MaMa Rosa's - Frozen pizzas and snack foods
• Manwich - Canned sloppy Joe mix
• Margherita - Italian-style processed meats
• Marie Callender's - Frozen meals
• Move Over Butter - Margarine
• Orville Redenbacher's - Popcorn
• PAM - Spray cooking oils
• Parkay - Bread spreads
• Patio - Tex-Mex-style frozen meals
• Pemmican - Beef and turkey jerky
• Penrose - Pickled sausages
• Peter Pan - Peanut butter
• Poppycock - Snack food
• Ranch Style - Baked and Refried beans
• Reddi-wip - Whipped cream
• Ro*tel - Canned tomato sauce
• Rosarita - Mexican-style foods
• Slim Jim - Meat snacks
• Swiss Miss -Powdered cocoa for hot chocolate and pudding
• Squeez 'N Go - Prepared pudding
• Van Camp's - Canned beans
• VH - Sauces (Available in Canada only)
• Wesson - Cooking oils
• Wolf Brand Chili - Chili
• Wolfgang Puck - Prepared foods branded by Chef Wolfgang Puck, founder of Spago

ConAgra.

Environmental record

ConAgra has been criticized for its lack of response to global warming. A 2006 report by CERES, a non-profit organization that works to address global climate change and other sustainability issues, titled "Corporate Governance and Climate Change: Making the Connection," measures how 100 leading global companies are responding to global warming. Companies in the report were evaluated on a 0 to 100 scale. ConAgra scored a total of 4 points, the lowest of any of the food companies rated.^[2]

In 2003-2004, ConAgra participated in a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency voluntary investigation and clean-up program. Through the program, the company cleaned up a property previously used for lithium ore processing and constructed a new 80,000 square foot (7,000 m²) office/warehouse building. ^[3]

Labor record

In May 2003, ConAgra and its subsidiary Gilroy Foods agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle charges of hiring discrimination brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The charges involved a July 1999 Teamsters strike at a plant in King City, then owned by Basic Vegetable Products LP but later purchased by ConAgra. In August 2001, the company successfully negotiated with the union to end the two-year strike with a new contract that would recall workers based on seniority. However, the recall process excluded workers who were on leave at the time of the purchase including those out due to work injury or pregnancy. Others were denied jobs due to a history of previous injury or illness, despite their having no restrictions on returning to work. According to the EEOC, most of the 39 workers who were excluded from the recall process had been working at the plant for 10 to 20 years and were primarily Hispanic and female. ^[4]

The company's Greeley Colorado plant had been cited almost 10 times from 1999 to 2002 for violating worker safety^[5].

Health record

In 2001, the U.S. Department of Agriculture halted operations at two ConAgra plants because of health violations. The company was threatened with shutdowns at least a half dozen more times. ^{[citation needed]} The ConAgra facility in Longmont, Colorado, had the highest rate of salmonella among all the turkey processors tested by the Department during 2001. Nearly half of the turkeys processed at ConAgra’s Longmont, Colorado, facility were contaminated with harmful Salmonella bacteria, compared with a rate of 13 percent for the industry at large.^[6]

In 2002, ConAgra, together with other major food and beverage companies including PepsiCo, General Mills, Kellogg, Sara Lee, and H.J. Heinz Co., spent heavily to defeat Oregon's measure 27, which would have required food companies to label products that contain genetically modified ingredients.^[7] According to the Oregon Secretary of State, ConAgra contributed $71,000 to the campaign to defeat the ballot initiative.^[8]

Ethical record

In 1997 ConAgra pled guilty to federal criminal charges that its Peavey Grain unit illegally sprayed water on stored grain to increase its weight and value and also bribed Federal inspectors. The company agreed to pay $8.3 million to resolve the charges, which included a $4.4 million criminal fine, $3.45 million as compensation for illegal profits and $450,000 to reimburse the U.S. Department of Agriculture for storage and investigation expenses. ConAgra had also paid $2 million to settle a related civil case filed by a group of Indiana farmers. ^[9] Multinational Monitor, a corporate watchdog organization, named ConAgra one of the 'Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s'.^[10]

ConAgra Doesn't care if its customers get sick or die from Salmonella

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ConAgra issued a health alert Tuesday afternoon and asked stores nationwide to stop selling Banquet and store-brand chicken and turkey pot pies, but the company didn't recall the pies until Thursday evening. The company and federal officials warned customers not to eat the pot pies and to throw them away, and ConAgra is offering refunds.

The recall, which also includes beef pot pies to avoid confusion, affects all varieties sold under the store brands Albertson's, Hill Country Fare, Food Lion, Great Value (sold at Wal-Mart stores), Kirkwood, Kroger, Meijer and Western Family.

Even though the pot pies made by ConAgra have been linked to at least 174 cases of salmonella in 32 states, the U.S. Department of Agriculture did not have the authority to require the company to recall the pot pies. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at least 33 people have been hospitalized as part of the ongoing outbreak, but so far no deaths have been reported.

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Bill Marler, a lawyer from Seattle-based firm Marler Clark, said if anyone bought ConAgra's pot pies after the company knew about the link to the salmonella outbreak, the company could face punitive damages in a lawsuit because the product wasn't immediately recalled.

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"You're looking at the perfect example of a broken system," Rep. Rosa DeLauro said about the pot pie recall.

Earlier this year, the Connecticut Democrat helped introduce legislation that would give the FDA the power to order mandatory recalls of adulterated food products, plus establish fines for companies that don't promptly report contaminated products.

"It is a voluntary recall, so it is up to the industry," DeLauro said.

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