Food Safety

Responding to reports of rising vegetarianism among teenagers, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association "responded to the looming vegetarian crisis by launching a website, Cool 2B Real, in an attempt to link meat consumption with some degree of hipness. The site, which looks like a cross between a Barbie fan page and a Taco Bell ad (beef-filled tacos and gigantic hamburgers dot the screen), extols teenage girls to 'Keep it Real' - 'real' as in a person who eats beef, preferably three or four times a day.

Wampler Foods, a unit of poultry producer Pilgrim's Pride, has hired Edelman PR Worldwide to help handle a recall crisis, according to O'Dwyer's PR. Over the weekend, Pilgrim's Pride recalled 27.4 million pounds of cooked sandwich meat, primarily sold under the Wampler brand. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have traced a deadly strain of listeria bacteria to a Pilgrim's Pride plant in Franconia, Pennsylvania. This is the largest meat recall in U.S. history.

"U.S. food companies can seek federal approval to avoid using the word "irradiation" on labels of foods treated with the disease-killing process, and instead use language such as "cold pasteurization," the Food and Drug Administration said. ... The FDA issued guidelines explaining how companies can petition the agency to use more neutral language on the label of food treated with irradiation.

For years the tobacco industry has been using restaurant trade associations as front groups in its battle to keep Americans puffing. Now this strategy is documented on a new web site hosted by the University of California-San Franciso. "If Big Tobacco can't buy hospitality groups to serve as fronts, it sets up its own," the site states. Examples include the "California Business and Restaurant Alliance" and the ""Beverly Hills Restaurant Association" (created by a Tobacco Institute PR firm).