WHAT HEELS: Rotten Tomatoes
Federal prosecutors allege that CA tomato processor SK Foods is at the epicenter of a wide-ranging, years-long bribery scheme, reports The New York Times:
Officials say that [SK Foods owner Frederick Scott Salyer] and others at [the company] greased the palms of a handful of corporate buyers in exchange for lucrative contracts and confidential information on bids submitted by competitors. This most likely drove up ingredient prices for the big food companies.
In addition, prosecutors say that for years, SK Foods shipped its customers millions of pounds of bulk tomato paste and puree that fell short of basic quality standards - with falsified documentation to mask the problems. Often that meant mold counts so high the sale should have been prohibited under federal law; at other times it involved breaching specifications in the sales contracts, such as acidity levels or the age of the product.
The scope of the tainted shipments was much broader than the bribery scheme, touching more than 55 companies. In some cases, companies detected problems and sent the products back - but in many cases, according to prosecutors, they did not, and the tainted ingredients wound up in food sold to consumers. …
Randy W. Worobo, an associate professor of food microbiology at
“There’s been a lot of hype about inferior-quality products being made in
After SK Foods declared bankruptcy last year, its two CA processing plants were sold to Olam International of Singapore.
Comments