Give credit where credit is due - Loblaws does their homework and makes it a point of knowing who's saying what about them. In my "inbox", I received the following email:
Hi there,Clearly, Loblaws is listening to bloggers. How would you take this email?
I wanted to reach out to you in response to your recent posting about Stuffed Salsa Pork Tenderloin and your experience at a Toronto Loblaw Superstore. First of all, I'd like to thank you for shopping at the Loblaw Superstore and for buying Canadian products. We take all customer concerns seriously and wanted to reach out to you about your experience.
We have recently revitalized the meat shopping experience in store, however, your experience indicates that our efforts to educate both our colleagues and customers about our products can be improved.
I'd like to reassure you that we do indeed source a great deal of Canadian Pork and are committed to increasing the amount of Canadian product we source. Sourcing with integrity – which includes sourcing as much local and domestic product as possible – is one of the key pillars of our CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) mandate. In fact, our new Free From line of meats includes pork produced here in Canada and even pictures one of our suppliers on pack. It is raised without the use of antibiotics or hormones, and sourced from dedicated Canadian suppliers (small family farms in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta). Like all Canadian pork and chicken, PC pork and chicken are proudly hormone free. We are also proud to carry other meats products, such as chicken and beef, sourced from Canada as well.
Now that we’ve clarified the information mentioned on your blog, we hope you’ll take the time to visit your local store and try out some of the great local pork that we do in fact offer.
Thanks very much, and happy barbecuing - your recipe did indeed look delicious!
Kind regards,
Sheri
Sheri Helman
Senior Manager, Public Relations
Loblaw Companies Limited
1 President's Choice Circle I Brampton, Ontario I L6Y 5S5
Tel: (905) 459-2500, ext. 6253 Fax: (905) 861-2325
sheri.helman@loblaw.ca
In my opinion, it's good to be able to have this dialogue with a large grocery chain and it's equally as positive for them to hear your feedback.
To their credit, I did find veal at Loblaws that had a Canadian marking on it.
Does this mean that the meat product is raised in Canada or processed in Canada, or both. In fact, to put a Made in Canada sticker on a product only means that per cent of the production cost was incurred in Canada; the ingredients could come from anywhere. But this is another debate.
In other meat product news...
An E.Coli alert for a current recall of some varieties of President's Choice (branding name for Loblaws) is out. Watch the best-before dates between April 29 and June 16, inclusive, sold in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada. The alert originated in the U.S. Does this mean that the meat is from the U.S.?
Consumers should avoid eating certain President's Choice brand steaks, roasts and ground beef products that are being pulled from store shelves because of possible contamination with E. coli, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency says.
The agency issued the health hazard alert Tuesday as an expansion of a recall of beef products processed in the U.S. in April by JBS Swift Beef Company in Greeley, Colo., after 18 people fell ill.
To read the whole story, see CBC Online . What's most disturbing is that one of the stores listed is my local market.
