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Sparkle (0)
Time was you could buy a bottle of ketchup and immediately start pouring the condiment to your heart's delight.
You did not have to unscrew the top, pull back the non-tampering plastic seal,throw out the seal,and then screw the top back on before you began using the ketchup
But you would have to be over thirty to remember those days. Any product that could possibly be tampered with after it has left the manufacturer now comes with a plastic protector that says to consumers --no one has touched this product since it left the manufacturer.
The plastic seals became part of American packaged goods as a result of the murders of seven people in 1982. The victims --all from the Chicago area --had taken Extra-Strength Tylenol medicine capsules which were laced with
potassium cyanide. The murderer was never found.
However,the reaction of Johnson &Johnson, the manufacturer of Tylenol has become an American classic of what you should do in a crisis.
They put the safety of people ahead of immediate shareholder benefit. Their stock tanked for a year but rebounded because consumers had confidence and trust in the company.
Which brings us to the latest product safety scandal coming out of China. This time it's tainted milk and milk byproducts -- tainted with melamine -the same poison that was found in pet food last year.
This time the melamine popped up in baby formula. Further testing found the poison is in a whole host of products ranging from candy to cookies.
Some estimates say the victims could reach 10 million.
China is pointing the finger of Sanlu Group Co ---43% of the company is owned by New Zealand's Fonterra Cooperative. The government of China owns the remaining 57%.
Fonterra is definitely not taking the same approach as Johnson& Johnson took in 1982.
In a phone conference to discuss the companies financial statements with the media , the chairman of Fonterra said the contamination scandal would not deter the company's commitment to " bringing healthy safe dairy products to China." He also said the contamination had taught the company a painful lesson --to be more suspicious.
"Fonterra missed testing for melamine ... so did everybody else," says Ferrier, who then corrected himself to say Sanlu missed testing.
He says Fonterra has worked aggressively with Sanlu and has confidence in its quality control, but it is difficult to predict "criminal contamination".
"We invested in a local company under the expectation that we could continue to bring in quality rules and procedures to make sure product was healthy for Chinese consumers".
"But ... jeez, someone coming in and poisoning milk? You can't get it all".
In future, Ferrier expects companies around the world to be checking for a wide range of contaminants.
tvnz.co.nz
Hmmm. Might I suggest the good folks in New Zealand study up on the Tylenol case. Not only did the CEO's sympathy for the deaths and illness sound less than heartfelt he also took a "don't blame us" attitude. Not exactly confident building.
David Wolf is a corporate communications and marketing strategist who has lived in Beijing since 1995 and says Fonterra's brand is in big trouble because the company allegedly knew about the contamination weeks before the kidney stone outbreak.
Fonterra, the large New Zealand food cooperative that partnered with Sanlu to manufacture the formula, will be remembered for a long time as a company that allegedly knew about the contamination some weeks prior to the kidney stone outbreak, that, justly or otherwise, reputedly did nothing to either stop the sale of the product or alert authorities. I cannot speak for the veracity of these claims, but they are circulating as if they are the truth.
[...]The lesson of Fonterra is plain: foreign partners in joint ventures have
