FoodserviceDashboard.com

We’ll be posting a weekly recap of all of our Tweets and re-Tweets. You can also follow us at: www.twitter.com/FsDashboard!

You’ll see that we follow tweets from Food Manufacturers and Distributors, to Restaurants and Associations, to Journalists and Bloggers, Retail Grocery Stores to Convenience Stores,  Industry publications and celebrated Chefs,  to Foodies and Goverment agencies……

We cover the landscape of the food industry.

@paulbarron Yum Brands gives $500,000 to provide food for victims in Haiti – AWESOME @kfc_colonel http://ow.ly/WUlp

@QMG Chinese create shamless knock-off’s of famous American restaurant brands such as Starbucks and McDonald’s: http://ow.ly/WUuU

@PeterRomeo A roundup of what restaurants and chains are doing to help earthquake victims in Haiti: http://snipurl.com/u3ec3

@NRNonline Daphne’s Greek Cafe files for Ch. 11: The fast-casual Daphne’s Greek Cafe chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy pr… http://bit.ly/7VffJs

@FoodMfg Peanut Butter Recall Spreads To Other Products http://bit.ly/6YygpK

@RestaurantMentr McDonald’s Contributes to Disaster Relief Efforts in Haiti http://bit.ly/8biiQF

@Debra_Blueberry U.S. Foodservice Donates $50,000 to Haiti Relief Effort: http://bit.ly/60IIEh

@FastFoodMaven RT @QSRweb Exclusive.. @DelTaco parent company selling sister-brand: Captain D’s on the market http://ow.ly/Wvvb

@FoodBizDaily General Mills Foundation Pledges $250,000 to Earthquake Relief in Haiti

Nice to see: @FoodBizDaily Brat Pitt and Angelina Jolie donates 1 million to Doctors without Borders

Gr8 use of Twitter: @SouthBeachGril is vry proud of crew. Hlth Insp. just graded our restaurant-a 99.5 & many compliments on our operation!

@ZagatBuzz Hugh Jackman, aka Wolverine, to be the face of @Lipton_Tea via @guardiannews http://is.gd/6fecq

@RestaurantMentr Applebee’s launches remodeling push http://bit.ly/8t9Icb

@RestaurantMentr The Women’s Foodservice Forum Names Fritzi Woods as Incoming President and Chief Executive Officer http://bit.ly/8jAp7P

@bmarler is ALWAYS on top of things. Interesting points regarding Nestle Toll House and Contaminated Flour… http://bit.ly/7gGISw

@RonRuggless V-Day at White Castle?: burger chain offers candlelight dinner reservations http://bit.ly/8qk2Dm questioning Harold & Kumar’s “relationship”

@ihospitality IH News: Seattle’s Best to debut canned coffee drinks http://bit.ly/8xqSGC

@PeterRomeo McDonald’s promotes Don Thompson to president, succeeding Ralph Alvarez. Jan Fields named U.S. president

@PeterRomeo Gene Baldwin named interim CFO for Benihana Inc. http://snipurl.com/u2m7o

@seriouseats Cute. Coca-Cola “Happiness Machine” dispenses more than just soda to group of college students. Video: http://su.pr/6wZ9Lt

@RonRuggless Keep On Truckin: RT @FastFoodMaven: Kogi BBQ generates $2 million in 1st year http://bit.ly/5CBQc3

@slashfood Irony of the day: fast food restaurants in UK hospitals http://bit.ly/5NoE9p

@NexCenBrands Multiple-Concept Franchising: The Growing Allure Of Operating Several Brands http://bit.ly/Nex0113A

@eartheats Pepsi and Mountain Dew Throwback Will Kill You Just As Fast As The HFCS Kind http://bit.ly/6oFgQD (via @TreeHugger) /@aschweig

@DairyFoods HP Hood recalls Heluva Good Cold Pack Cheese Food: Click here for full story http://bit.ly/7c4O6v

@ZagatBuzz Food makers quietly cut back on salt (@wsj) http://is.gd/6b7M8

@paulbarron Fast Casual goes global as Chipotle eyes France, Germany for new restaurants http://ow.ly/W8oN

@RonRuggless Feeling Their Oats: Another coffee co. offers hot oatmeal http://bit.ly/91vHjO This time Caribou

@ihospitality IH Retail News: Pepsi’s Social Marketing Campaign Stumbles Out of the Gate: Erick Schonfeld subm.. http://bit.ly/698w8k

@npdfood Americans are using more store brand and private label products … and have been since 2002, reports NPD.

@manageyourbar Diageo Congratulates NJ Legislature for Passing Legislation to Combat Drunk Driving http://bit.ly/6SNgNz

@RonRuggless Not Taking It w/ Grain of Salt: Chefs boiling over proposed NYC salt crackdown http://bit.ly/4Os9FQ

@JeffreySummers The Casual Restaurant Bankruptcy Epidemic: http://bit.ly/6Dx2iy

@foodrecalls PARKERS FARM, INC. RECALLS SEVERAL PRODUCTS BECAUSE OF POSSIBLE HEALTH RISK: PARKERS FARM, INC. OF COON RAPIDS, MI… http://bit.ly/6ZupJ5

@ashleyebentley A new program from the USDA seeks to find a way to increase fruit and vegetable consumption among food stamp recipients: http://ow.ly/VhBI

@FoodMfg Wisconsin To Open Sausage Development Center http://bit.ly/5fFpTp

@TheGourmetGirl Did you know by federal law, for a noodle to actually be a noodle it must have 5.5% egg solids in it, otherwise it cannot be called a noodle

Agriculture, C-Stores, Consumers, Distributors, Equipment and Supply, Featured, Finance | Economics, Global, Health | Probiotic, Industry News, Manufacturers, Market Trends, Monthly Highlights, Related Industry Sites, Restaurants, Retail, Site News fsdashboard, recap, twitter

Reuters via Crain’s Chicago Business:

Fertilizer maker CF Industries Holdings Inc. edged up its hostile offer for smaller rival Terra Industries, removing what has been seen as a major obstacle for the bid by boosting the cash portion.

CF Industries said Sunday it is offering to acquire Terra for $32 in cash — including a $7.50 special dividend that Terra plans to pay — and 0.1034 of a share of CF common stock for each Terra share.

That would amount to $40.61 per share based on CF’s Friday closing price and represents a 28 percent premium to Terra’s Friday closing price, the company said in a statement. It is about 5 percent higher than CF’s previous stock bid of 0.465 CF shares for every Terra share.

Terra acknowledged receipt of the revised CF proposal and said it would review it in due course.

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Agriculture, Featured cf industries, fertilizer, terra

By: Mary MacVean | The Los Angeles Times

The nutrition standards behind the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program have not been updated since 1995. Today, the federal Institute of Medicine is issuing a report recommending new standards, calling for more produce, more whole grains. And for the first time, a limit to calories.

Thirty million children eat school lunch, and 10 million eat school breakfast — and the IOM panel says it hopes new standards will help those children develop good habits that they carry into adulthood. That, the panel says, should help curb obesity and other health problems associated with diet.

The panel’s recommendations go to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for possible implementation. It was the USDA which requested the report.

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Agriculture, Consumers, Featured, Manufacturers department of agriculture, national school lunch program, school breakfast program, school nutrition, usda

By: Katherine Gustafson | Change.org

In an excellent essay called “Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008″ in the March/April issue of Mother Jones magazine, writer Paul Roberts, author of The End of Oil, tells us that something’s gotta give if we are to seriously feed the world’s people sustainably.

“Nearly everyone agrees that we need new methods that produce more higher-quality calories using fewer resources, such as water or energy, and accruing fewer ‘externals,’ such as pollution or unfair labor practices,” he writes. “Where the consensus fails is over what should replace the bad old industrial system. It’s not that we lack enthusiasm — activist foodies represent one of the most potent market forces on the planet. Unfortunately, a lot of that conscientious buying power is directed toward conceptions of sustainable food that may be out of date.”

What we need if we want to really transform food systems on a large scale, he says, is new ways of thinking about what “sustainable” might mean. A “tendency to replace complexity with checklists is the hallmark of the alternative food sector,” he writes. “Today’s federal requirements for organic food, for example, only hint at the richness of the original concept, which encouraged farmers to not only forgo chemical fertilizers but also replenish soils on-site, using livestock manure or crop rotations.”

We need to be more realistic and more flexible. As Roberts puts it: the “risks of pragmatism must be weighed against the risk of perfectionism.” In other words, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Here are seven ideas to consider on this front:

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Agriculture, Consumers, Featured federal requirements, sustainable food

By: Ed O’Keefe | Washington Post.com

If you’re looking for the next big issue that could land on the desk of the already burdened Obama administration, look no further than concerns about the nation’s food safety. It’s the kind of problem that inspires sleepless nights, just like nightmare scenarios involving a possible outbreak of H1N1 flu or the next big natural disaster.

Case in point: this past weekend’s New York Times report about Stephanie Smith, a children’s dance instructor inflicted with a severe form of food-borne illness caused by E. coli after eating hamburger meat in early fall 2007. (Similarly, The Post’s Lyndsey Layton last month wrote about a woman infected with the same strain of E. coli after eating cookie dough.)

In the Times story, reporter Michael Moss wrote that:

Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states.

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Agriculture, Consumers, Featured, Health | Probiotic, Manufacturers, Restaurants, Retail e coli, ground beef, O157:H7, raw cookie dough, vilsack

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Global plans to reduce hunger by boosting food production are too narrowly focussed on farming without considering how to slow population growth or halt climate change, long-time environmental analyst Lester Brown said on Tuesday.

The Obama administration and leaders of other wealthy nations have promised to spend more money and coordinate efforts to reduce the chronic hunger that plagues more than 1 billion people in the world.

But the initiatives fail to recognise the need to stabilise climate and population, said Brown, who has been writing about how to fix the planet for more than 30 years.

“If we don’t address these two issues seriously, there’s not a chance that we’re going to be able to increase food security and eradicate hunger in the world,” said Brown, noting he was struck by “the narrowness of the approach” to food security.

Brown was speaking to reporters as he launched a new edition of his prescription for saving the planet called “Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.”

Brown warns of dire consequences from food shortages as climate change hurts crops at a time when rising population and incomes increase demand for grain and meat.

The world must make dramatic changes in energy, transport, population, food and environmental policy, he argues in his book. (http://r.reuters.com/xat98d)

Grain prices soared to record levels last year, causing riots and hoarding in some countries, and sparking a move for import-dependent rich countries to secure farmland in mainly poorer regions to ease food security.

The United Nations’ World Food Programme estimates more than a billion people are chronically hungry, and Brown believes that could soar past 1.2 billion by 2015.

Water shortages for irrigating crops caused by drained aquifers and melting glaciers could threaten wheat and rice harvests in China and India, which would pressure food prices higher around the world, Brown said.

“If these climate stresses keep building, if food security continues to deteriorate, we’re in trouble as a civilization,” he said.

The United Nations has said the world needs to produce 70 percent more food by 2050.

Yield gains from new genetically modified crops probably will be much smaller than the dramatic increases in wheat and rice that helped reduce famine 40 years ago, Brown said.

“I don’t see another Green Revolution in the cards,” he said, adding leaders need to “get the brakes on population” to improve food security around the world.

(Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Agriculture, Consumers, Featured, Global climate change, food security, Global, population

By: James Limbach | ConsumerAffairs.com

A new IBM study reveals that less than 20 percent of consumers trust food companies to develop and sell food products that are safe and healthy for themselves and their families.
Sixty percent of consumers surveyed said they are concerned about the safety of food they purchase, and 63 percent claimed to be knowledgeable about the content of the food they buy.

The survey of 1,000 consumers in the nation’s ten largest cities shows that consumers are increasingly wary of the safety of food purchased at grocery stores, and their confidence in — and trust of — food retailers, manufacturers and grocers is declining.

The Debilitating Impact of Recalls

Eighty-three percent of respondents were able to name a food product that was recalled in the past two years due to contamination or other safety concerns. Nearly half of survey respondents — 46 percent — named peanut butter, the staple of school lunches for kids across the nation, as the most recognizable recall. Spinach came in a distant second, with 15 percent awareness nearly two years after the incident.

Consumers are proving to be extra cautious in purchasing food products after a recall. Forty-nine percent of those asked said they would be less likely to purchase a food product again if it was recalled due to contamination. Sixty-three percent confirmed they would not buy the food until the source of contamination had been found and addressed. Meanwhile, eight percent of respondents said they would never purchase the food again, even after the source of contamination was found and addressed.

These findings underscore how the rise in recalls and contamination has significantly eroded consumer confidence in food and product safety, as well as with the companies that manufacture and distribute these products.

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Agriculture, Consumers, Featured, Global, Health | Probiotic food safety, food security, healthy

The Packer.com -

The Food and Drug Administration is planning a big boost in the number of inspections performed on foreign produce suppliers.

The number of foreign food facility food inspections performed by FDA for fiscal year 2010 will rise to 650 from 200 in fiscal year 2009, said Roberta Wagner, director of the office of compliance with the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

Wagner outlined the increase at a meeting during the United Fresh Produce Association’s Washington Public Policy Conference on Sept. 10.

Meanwhile, foreign inspections of higher-risk FDA regulated food — including produce and seafood — will grow to about 1,000 in fiscal year 2011, she said.

In fiscal year 2010, the inspections will focus on foreign produce production and packinghouses. Wagner said in an e-mail Sept. 22 that FDA plans to perform foreign inspections of growers who export large volumes of produce to the U.S. “with a focus on those growers that have onsite packing and/or processing operations.”

The top 10 exporting countries will have about 20 produce inspections per country, she told town hall attendees.

Those inspections will be used to inform the USDA if those countries have adequate and comparable food safety systems to the U.S. — at least compared to the standard of public health protection.

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Agriculture, Featured, Global center for food safety and applied nutrition, fda, foreign inspections, united fresh produce association

By: Alan Bjerga and Peter Cook | Bloomberg.com

Archer Daniels Midland Co., the world’s largest grain processor, expects improved yields will deliver enough crops during the next 40 years to supply rising demand for ethanol without hurting the food supply.

Archer Daniels, based in Decatur, Illinois, plans to boost output and storage capacity as global food needs rise, Chief Executive Officer Patricia Woertz said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Washington. Rising use of biofuels in the U.S. hasn’t cut available food supplies because of greater crop yields, she said.

“The ability to match the ethanol needs for corn is way outstripped by the additional yields,” said Woertz, who runs the second-biggest U.S. ethanol producer. Increased yields have provided for greater exports in recent years even as ethanol production consumes almost a third of the U.S. corn crop, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show.

Corn surged to a record price last year in Chicago, partly as oil and gasoline rallied, before plunging as the global recession eroded demand. The grain has tumbled 20 percent this year, touching the lowest level in almost three years. The U.S. is the world’s largest corn grower and exporter.

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Agriculture, Distributors, Featured, Manufacturers adm, corn crops, ehtanol