Industry Advocacy

MEXICO CITY - Wal-Mart de Mexico SA announced on Wednesday that it is quitting the country's supermarket trade group after it banned members from comparing prices with competitors, The Associated Press reports.

GENEVA - A U.N. human rights envoy Tuesday questioned the safety of genetically modified (GM) food and said big corporations had more to gain from its use than poor countries fighting starvation, Reuters reports.

WASHINGTON - The Food Marketing Institute and the American Meat Institute separately released statements opposing new country-of-origin guidelines released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

DALLAS - Fleming has appointed industry veteran Jim Thatcher to serve as president of Fleming IGA. In this new role, Thatcher will be responsible for leading Fleming's support of more than 600 IGA retail locations supplied by the company.

WASHINGTON - U.S. food companies can now seek federal approval to avoid using the word "irradiation" on labels of foods treated with the disease-killing process, and instead use language such as "cold pasteurization," the Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON, DC - The nation's top wholesale grocery cooperatives earned more than $29 billion in revenue during 2001, according to this year's NCB Co-op 100, an annual report issued by the National Cooperative Bank (NBC) on the nation's 100 highest revenue-earning cooperatives.

NEWARK, Del. - The Produce Marketing Association has called upon President George W. Bush, to do everything within his power to resolve West Coast port shutdowns in a letter dated today.

WASHINGTON - Less than a week after the USDA "declared war" on dangerous E. coli bacteria, agribusiness giant Cargill Inc. announced a voluntary recall of about 400,000 pounds of beef after federal authorities linked it to an E. coli outbreak that has sickened at least 56 people in the Midwest.