Trading Partners

A Pew-commissioned poll by the bipartisan team of Hart Research and Public Opinion Strategies has found that among likely voters surveyed across the United States, about nine in 10 are in favor of the federal government’s adoption of additional food safety measures, and 64 percent think that imported foods are often or sometimes unsafe.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a new way to head off potential cases of foodborne illness: the Reportable Food Registry (RFR), an electronic portal that food industry officials must now use to alert the agency when they find their products might sicken or kill people or animals. The requirement, a result of legislation, took effect with the launch of the portal.

Visual merchandising (VM) is an indispensable retail discipline, consisting of a series of practical selling tools that are used to influence what and how much consumers buy. Successful retailers -- supermarkets in particular -- can employ effective and integrated VM practices as part of the retail experience and overall brand delivery, to successfully maximize sales and profits in-store -- essentially, it’s a silent selling service of sales-driving levers and tools.

A recent poll of grocers showed that bulk food sales are up an average of 10 percent at food retailer of all sizes, driven by consumer demand, according to the Little Rock, Ark.-based Bulk Is Green Council.

In a bid to make it easier for eco-conscious consumers to choose seafood from sustainably harvested, well-managed fisheries, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has overhauled its ecolabel, which now prominently features the words “Certified Sustainable Seafood.”

KSS, Inc. has introduced PriceNet SaaS, a hosted version of the Florham Park, N.J.-based company’s fuel price management software for grocery and convenience retailers, giving fuel providers the option to obtain automated fuel price management via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.

The recently launched “Smart Choices” food labeling program, which has been adopted so far by 10 consumer packaged goods companies, including Kraft, Unilever and Kellogg, has become controversial as some nutritionists object to the designation of such items as Froot Loops and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese as “better-for-you” items worthy of the program’s prominent green checkmark logo.

Gluten Free Café™ from The Hain Celestial Group has expanded its offering with the launch of two new frozen entrées.