P i s t a c h i o

I follow Seth Godin religiously, and religiously is a good word to describe it, because I don’t always want to hear what he has to say, which is why I’m a lapsed Catholic, I guess.

First of all, he posts daily, which is envious. Take a day off already. It’s hard to keep up.

Second, the reason he can be a tough slog is because he sets a high bar, and I don’t always feel up to the task. I try. I appreciate his idealism because it’s from the school of best practices. His vision hangs on helping his followers establish strong and lasting businesses. He has great ideas around authenticity and doing right by our customers and clients. I’m down with that.

Today, I had a laugh. Turns out Seth grew up in South Buffalo watching Irv Weinstein report fire after fire after fire on Eyewitness News. We also had Eyewitness News in Toronto while I was growing up. Gags about Buffalo perpetually burning were rampant in those days, and it’s fun to be reminded.

This morning he opens his blog with just that, as part of looking at what’s wrong with cable news. He writes that business, like lousy cable news, is often quick to focus on urgent rather than important, noise over thoughtful analysis, opinions over facts, among other points of interest.

I’ve always seen him as a proponent of business responsibly asking: “Is this good and right for my customer?” I’m down with that, too.

Cable news today? Jon Stewart and his crack team of ersatz reporters make “important” funny, and  “great” funny has to be good and right. This is what Stewart et al hit four nights a week.

I am religiously down with that.

Truth in packaging

via

Thanks to Doug Tee for Tweeting this today.

Creative ideas like this really get me going. Architecture and design are already riding the container revolution. Restos are a natural application.

And the Economist announced today that Canada is only 14th among the world’s most innovative countries [thanks Sean Moffitt]. There’s got to be a miscalculation. Don’t get me started.

Logistics? Not worried. If the same brights are on it, no problem.

Here’s the Globe’s report.

Seth Godin enjoys his food metaphors.

To wit, his book The Meatball Sundae. The title’s discomfiting hyperbole drives home the point that we can’t assume two great things will work well together.

Yesterday, Seth was cooking a couple of eggs as an illustration for one of his blog posts, all while putting in some nice plugs for local, sustainable food.

He paints a lovely picture: a cast iron skillet, good olive oil, a couple of free, naturally raised eggs and a spray of David’s kosher salt [insisting how the shape of the salt crystals makes it more flavourful]. Best of all are the crispy, lacy, collar trim  around each egg, which he developed by letting them lollygag a little longer than usual in the pan.

Consider the free lunch of pulled pork sandwiches handed out by the minister of agriculture on the Parliament Hill on May 6th, with replays later in the week in Calgary and Edmonton.

Pork is safe to eat, we get it, but the public needs something more credible, or better PR.

Or better yet, would they not  have taken a cue from the of the book of Maple Leaf?

During the listeria tragedy, CEO Michael McCain acted quickly, put his own face on the crisis, conducted two voluntary recalls, one further reaching than the first, and took public responsibility. The corporation rebounded quickly, financially, in brand health and in public trust.

The farmers were thinking right along these lines. They told the media that they wanted a mass cull, including the farmer whose herd was sick.

He had the most to lose, yet he was ready to sacrifice everything, just to be safe.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency was surely under tremendous pressure to protect the industry. Hogs had started selling $20 less each.

Playing it safe, the CFIA said: “We haven’t decided to cull the herd yet.”

When the herd was finally culled three days later, the CFIA said that it was not because the swine were sick. The pens were overcrowded. Sows had continued to reproduce throughout the crisis, but mature swine had not gone to market because of the quarantine.

A government agency under siege, as the CFIA is today, may have understandably had the interests of the pork producers in mind while delaying  culls, but in the end, nothing would have been better for the industry’s image than to show it’s not afraid to act quickly, responsibly, transparently to show that food safety is their primary concern, rather than the price of a hog.

Even producers afraid to lose money from such a crisis knows that to act quickly and to come clean are the best measures for protecting their industry.

Great find this morning.

Sorry for the opening advert to the Tostito video [like it's even my fault], except for the partial tag line that I’m going to rip off.

That’s it — the post title.

Thanks for sending me there, Matt Jennings, terroirist and Prince of Porc. That’s what they call him for being the Boston winner of Cochon555. [Could Toronto please sign up for this? We can certainly kick some charcuterie butt.]

Can business to be smart all the time?

Calling all food-makers. Give it a shot. The markets are saying simplicity is flying off the shelves.

Additives industry, don’t know what to tell you.

Take your R&D in another direction?

“I wanted witnesses. I wanted to mark the moment so that we would remember it.”

– Jeff Crump

The book had modest beginnings. “We had in mind a little spiral-bound book,” says Jeff Crump, Executive Chef of Ancaster Old Mill. He wanted to document how his kitchen and a local farm had found an exciting way to work closely together. Then Random House got interested, then a New York agent, then Earth to Table: A restaurant and farm relationship began entertaining inquires about Chinese publishing rights.

“A lot of farmers are gun-shy about working with chefs,” says Crump. “Chefs are picky, and kitchens aren’t naturally geared toward buying from small farms. But Crump found his match in Chris Krucker of nearby ManoRun Organic Farm.

“Chris got it,” says Crump….more

Despite our best efforts, we failed.

– Michael McCain, Maple Leaf Foods President

In shirtsleeves, as if to say, “I’m a husband and father, and this could have happened to my family,” Michael McCain faced the camera to proffer his apology. He fearlessly took responsibility for the dead with a corporate “we,” but his countenance was distinctly “me.”

In a best-practices kind of way, he owned up promptly and almost immediately widened the recall territory, as if to tell us this was doubly horrific for him as it was for us.

Corporate humanity has to have a heart, because a microbe costs 12 lives and $20 million.

Finally wrapped it up, the largest piece of business journalism I’ve tackled to date: 4500 words on the new provincial budgets and what they’re offering to restaurateurs and operators across the country.

It was a great assignment, a lot to chew on and plenty of opinionated industry people to quote.

Here they are.

A scintillating read.

Really.

Pacific-Prairie Edition

Ontario Edition

Atlantic Edition

Hello Restaurant News

At the close of the Food Summit in Rome last week, observers weighed in on what was essentially sad news: the best 181 delegate countries could agree on was further study of biofuel’s impact on an international food crisis.

The summit’s final declaration called for status quo on three fronts: continued farm subsidies, which will contribute to keeping the price of corn high, government-mandated biofuel content for gasoline and diesel, which keeps the demand in place, and import barriers, such as the one on Brazil’s sugar cane ethanol, which is a sweet alternative to corn, which makes it difficult to bring on stream in North America.

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Some numbers tell some stories …

From the Globe and Mail:

250% — The increase in American corn prices since 2006

3% — The portion of corn-price increases attributed to ethanol, says U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Shafer

30% — Is more like it, says Washington’s International Food Policy Research Institute

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From the New York Times:

50% — The portion of biofuel [mainly American corn ethanol] accounting for the worldwide demand for food crops last year, according to the International Monetary Fund

37 — The number of countries in critical need of food assistance right now