Personal Injury Law

ConAgra - Is the issue really that your customers are dumb or is it that your product has shit in it?

By E. coli Lawyer

Please remember, Salmonella is a fecal bacterium, and seriously, do any of us really expect to have a fecal bacterium in a product like this?

Also, remember, it is not like I do not know ConAgra, or respect some of the people that run the organization. Two years ago I spent a good part of a day explaining (from my perspective) why and how prior ConAgra outbreaks had occurred and 'why it is a bad idea to poison your customer.' Now, we are at it again in yet another outbreak, this time a Marie Callender's frozen entrée.  From the Portland paper:

Teresa Paulsen, a spokeswoman for ConAgra, said: …

Some of the ingredients, in particular the protein such as the chicken, are precooked before packaging. She said the package has explicit instructions on how to cook the entree in a microwave or oven.

"If it's cooked according to package instructions, any pathogen would be killed," she said.

"He said he cooked it normally," Marler said. "This time one had salmonella in it." … Marler said the consumer should not have to be responsible for killing any bacteria through cooking. "You can't expect the customer to be the kill step," he said.

Does this sound a bit too familiar? It sounds too much like to coverage given ConAgra during the last frozen dinner Salmonella outbreak in 2008 (sickened over 400 – about 1/3 sickened AFTER the 'recall') where ConAgra's PR machine trotted out the 'blaming the victim strategy.' At least when ConAgra sickened over 700 in 2007 (again, about 1/3 sickened AFTER the 'recall') with Salmonella-tainted peanut butter, they did not blame the customer. Even when ConAgra sickened 40 and killed an Ohio woman in 2002 with E. coli-tainted hamburger, it did not blame the consumer.

Why with frozen meals? Would it not be better to get the shit out of the product BEFORE it reaches the consumer?  I guess we will see what shakes out during the 2010 litigation.

Full post as published by Marler Blog on June 23, 2010 (boomark / email).