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Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak

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Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak

#51

Post by ncr100 »

justin66 wrote: post #22
adrianco wrote: post #7

I wonder if the other Boars Head plants also have issues. Avoid the entire brand? What brands have better hygiene?

You can always just go to a butcher.

I recently ate hot dogs from a local butcher.

Oh my God -- so much better.

Definitely go to a local butcher. You have no idea how much better it is. Comparatively, even the seemingly high quality supermarket Hot dogs taste like water plastic with salt, compared to the delicious meaty spongy texture sausage sticks that are local butcher hot dogs. It's seriously a whole lot better.

Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak

#52

Post by ToDougie »

sandyarmstrong wrote: post #35
ryandrake wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty scary how many people get fooled by "premium" branding. Think about what made you think that Boars Head was "premium". Was there any evidence that their meats were higher than average quality, that didn't ultimately come from the company itself? Or was it all their product positioning, price, what stores they were found in and so on (in other words, Marketing).

Compared to other brands available in the supermarket, my family finds that Boar's Head deli meats consistently taste better. There is something "cheap" that I find hard to quantify in the taste of generic grocery branded deli meats. I'm not educated enough to know what the difference is here, but I don't think the fact that Boar's Head costs more is entirely a marketing device.

To my unsophisticated palate, Boar's Head tastes like it has less filler. Will never purchase their product ever again. The findings were so egregious, it makes my blood boil.

Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak

#53

Post by mock-possum »

sandyarmstrong wrote: post #35
ryandrake wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty scary how many people get fooled by "premium" branding. Think about what made you think that Boars Head was "premium". Was there any evidence that their meats were higher than average quality, that didn't ultimately come from the company itself? Or was it all their product positioning, price, what stores they were found in and so on (in other words, Marketing).

Compared to other brands available in the supermarket, my family finds that Boar's Head deli meats consistently taste better. There is something "cheap" that I find hard to quantify in the taste of generic grocery branded deli meats. I'm not educated enough to know what the difference is here, but I don't think the fact that Boar's Head costs more is entirely a marketing device.

> There is something "cheap" that I find hard to quantify in the taste of generic grocery branded deli meats.

They tend to be watery and under seasoned. I can only assume it’s to make them as inoffensive as possible to accommodate the widest possible audience - but there’s no character to cheap deli meat, no striking taste.

Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak

#54

Post by datavirtue »

pwg wrote: post #42
justin66 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always just go to a butcher.

In order to do so, one has to have a local butcher who is still in operation. For many, any such local butchers were driven out of business years ago by the lower cost options in the supermarkets produced by the bulk producers, so the option to "just go to a butcher" is no longer available, at any cost.

It's available. Just be prepared for Boars Head price shock. Hell, the butcher probably carries Boars Head.

Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak

#55

Post by AlexandrB »

sandyarmstrong wrote: post #35
ryandrake wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty scary how many people get fooled by "premium" branding. Think about what made you think that Boars Head was "premium". Was there any evidence that their meats were higher than average quality, that didn't ultimately come from the company itself? Or was it all their product positioning, price, what stores they were found in and so on (in other words, Marketing).

Compared to other brands available in the supermarket, my family finds that Boar's Head deli meats consistently taste better. There is something "cheap" that I find hard to quantify in the taste of generic grocery branded deli meats. I'm not educated enough to know what the difference is here, but I don't think the fact that Boar's Head costs more is entirely a marketing device.

Not to discount your experience, but taste is so context sensitive and subjective that just believing that you're consuming a higher quality product is often enough to make it "taste better". There's a great Penn & Teller's Bullshit episode that illustrates this phenomenon for fancy water[1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2qydjVbLJk

Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak

#56

Post by vkou »

datavirtue wrote: post #44

How do you come back from this? Their whole schtick is absolute, unadulterated quality. Perfection. From this they garnered extremely high prices. They had it in the bag.

Easy. Just keep spending on marketing and bribing stores to give them preferential placement.

You think they were a premium brand, that did not compromise on quality. Do you have any evidence of this?

Or did you believe it because they told you they were, and because they charge more?

This is the beauty of unregulated free markets. With no actual baseline for quality, it's often easier to dupe people into believing that you're not cutting corners, than it is to not cut corners.

And for all intents and purposes, this is an unregulated market. The inspectors have been finding a horror show for years, but couldn't shut it down because, well, that would impact the meatpacker's bottom line, and some apparatchik somewhere is getting paid off to make sure that won't happen, and he will make your life very unpleasant if you try to make waves.

Regulations with no teeth aren't regulations. Everyone's mad at Boar's Head, but the actual problem is in the systemic failures that lead to the plant being open after it failed inspection after inspection.

The business should be liquidated, it's current owners are clearly incapable of operating it.

Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak

#57

Post by mikestew »

MisterTea wrote: post #33

The town is tiny with a population of 652 people. Seems like a perfect scenario for the company: setup plant in small town to employ cheap labor, be the largest employer in the town, use that leverage to prevent action taken against them. I can hear it now... "Now hold on here, we can't go shutting down the largest employer of registered voters in town. I personally spoke to the plant manager and they assured me they…

You’re assuming that the mayor decides whether the plant stays open? I’m pretty sure that’s not the way it works.

Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak

#58

Post by ToDougie »

datavirtue wrote: post #49
engineer_22 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From this, and linked articles on New York Times, the suggestion is laxed food safety standards are endemic across the entire processed food industry.

It requires engagement from the employees...a culture. On this, everyone is failing. Our leaders have contorted and conflicting allegiances. Their minds are filled with numbers swelling and cash multiplying. The focus is not on delivering value for all stakeholders.

And how many of the employees feel comfortable blowing the whistle? A chunk of them are bound to be undocumented/illegally in the US, and it seems like those folks are being taken advantage of already because they have so much to lose. Blowing the whistle on some weird looking green slime or leaks or whatever can mean getting deported. Not saying the worker is a bad person for looking the other way, but I am saying that we are doing this to ourselves and these are some really obvious consequences of awful policy.

Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak

#59

Post by gorbachev »

engineer_22 wrote: post #8
adrianco wrote: post #7

I wonder if the other Boars Head plants also have issues. Avoid the entire brand? What brands have better hygiene?

From this, and linked articles on New York Times, the suggestion is laxed food safety standards are endemic across the entire processed food industry.

From 2009: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html

Slaughterhouses not testing their products for E coli, because it's too expensive. Slaughterhouses blacklisting customers who do their own testing. USDA has no effective regulatory powers to change that.

Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak

#60

Post by vlachen »

post_break wrote: post #32

This is just like Blue Bell Ice cream. They killed people with their products. I'll never eat their stuff again and adding Boars head to the list.

A cautionary note: Often times a food manufacturing plant will contract with and produce multiple brands on the same equipment. For instance, I've seen brand name, store label, and bargain brand waffles come off the same line, with the same equipment and using the same ingredient stocks.

Of course, an industrial food plant isn't going to have a searchable presence online. It is quite difficult to find out exactly what any such facility makes, let alone what brands come out of it.

Of course I can't speak for every factory or brand, but my experience tells me to try and be cognizant of where bad products are made in addition to the brands themselves.

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