Posted on 02/12/2008 6:29:09 PM PST by Michael_Michaelangelo
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US grocery chain Trader Joe's said Monday it would stop selling food imported from China due to customers' concerns about the products' safety.
"Our customers have voiced concerns about products from this region and we have listened," Trader Joe's spokeswoman Alison Mochizuki said in a statement.
"All single ingredient food items sourced from mainland China are scheduled to be out of our stores by April 1," she said.
"We will continue to source products from other regions until our customers feel as confident as we do about the quality and safety of Chinese products."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
>>>Much Mediterranean Italian used anchovie as an ingredient.
And you probably then also know that both Thai and Vietnamese nuoc mam are also made from anchovies, from the South China Sea and the Gulf Of Thailand.
For some reason this really fascinates me.
There may have been some cross pollination of cultures. Who knows.
Certainly France has influenced Viet cooking in our time
That stuff’s great. I used a whole bunch of it with my lunch today at a Viet-Thai restaurant. Adds just the right amount of heat and has a good taste.
I guess you’ve never been to a Trader Joe’s.They have good products at reasonable prices.
It’s Thai chili sauce but made in good old Rosemead, Cali.
No. Crunchy conservatives shop there too.
Good prices on eggs and grass-fed meat.
Oh, and dried berries and non-hydrogenated peanut butter. You know--no trans-fats.
Cheers!
PING
I run a small health food store and have to say customer demand is very weak on this. Regardless, I have sought out suppliers who have high qa/qc standards. They say to me they are doing what they can to reduce sourcing from China. Especially with vitamins and supplements, that is very hard to do. The only way is for the company to have both a strong qa/qc group testing every lot of what comes in plus third party testing for work overloads and additional expertise.
There are others, but in my research, so far, there are three stand-outs, Solgar, Blue Bonnett, and Olympian Labs. Another that may get my stamp approval once I have finished my homework on them is Country-Life.
I give my competition, Trader Joe’s, a standing ovation on taking the lead here. It is a lot harder to do than it seems. Suppliers are not always forthcoming with their sources. They try to avoid the subject and make blanket assurances they obviously can’t back up.
Moreover, the lengths you would have to go to in order to certify to your own satisfaction that all the ingredients are safe is simply overwhelming. That Trader Joe’s is commited to this puts them on the top of my list. This means they had to get tough with all their suppliers. They are showing more balls and backbone than anyone else among the large stores.
Notice the relative silence from Whole Foods, Mrs. Greens and others.
Single source is where you can start, and it is where you have the best control as a retailer. I think once they have that down, they will move on to products with short ingredient lists.
I don’t think Trader Joe’s is engaging in symbolism here. I have a small health food store and have been working on this problem too. You need a dedicated staff to pursue it, and to keep the wrong products out of the store. It is not easy.
Thank you for your honesty.
We all want better product but it is difficult to source.
The ones we can tend to source are high dollar.
You folks who try to bring us the best product at the best price are to be commended
I would be very interested in the results when you finish your homework. Two companies I order supplements from were unable/unwilling to supply me with sourcing information when I asked. Of course, I'm just a lowly consumer :-)
God I hope so!
Good for them. It’s about darned time. Shame there isn’t a Trader Joe’s around here to shop at.
Now THAT'S funny! I came THIS close to plastering the screen with coffee (which might have dampened the humor a bit)!
You need ginger and garlic, too.
Maybe you should have googled it, then. How about wheat (contaminated with melamine, the stuff that killed pets) ), potatoes, bean curd, fresh fruit, dried fruit, olives, bay scallops, Pacific cod, catfish (stopped because it tested as contaminated and mushrooms, to name a few?
>>>I run a small health food store and have to say customer demand is very weak on this. Regardless, I have sought out suppliers who have high qa/qc standards.
When you go to a big China sourcing/wholesaling site like Alibaba.com (now owned by Yahoo IIRC) it’s easy to see why. It’s where you go to price and negotiate stuff like vitamin B1 by the hundred-kilogram lot or vitamin C by the metric ton. 20 kilos of 100 percent caffeine powder? Yep, can do.
They carry the special oil for my Birkenstocks.
Good for them!
I only wish we had TJ’s here in Texas.
I can’t figure out why such a large state doesn’t have ONE.
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