How to handle publicity for food packaging safety concerns
Food packaging safety expert Gary Kestenbaum offers considerations and suggestions for a corporate strategy to address negative publicity and public perception of your packaging.
Recent and not-so-recent articles have appeared in mainstream media regarding food packaging safety, targeting the use of fluorinated additives that present a confusing soup of chemical acronyms (PFOA, PFOS, PFAS, PFC and others) on food contact packaging with a focus on fast food.
Based on the tone of the articles and video news briefs, I suspect the media targeted fast-food applications rather than retail grocery items because media graphics and “teasers” of trendy, iconic well-known fast food brands generate instant viewer/reader attention.
The stories were virtual clones of one another, typical of sensational stories linked to food and packaging safety along the lines of “Do you know what’s in your [blank]?” All led with close-up photos of a fast-food burger contained within a paper wrapper, sometimes accompanied by a paperboard container of fries. The rhetoric began with a general question of food packaging safety and then referenced fluorinated additives, followed by a brief description of the components, their application and broad usage. Sound bites, quotes and comments from health agencies, related organizations and consumer safety groups were added to create or maximize the atmosphere of concern, fear and worry.
The domino effect
This style of reporting had me recalling similar experiences with the safety of food additives being called into question in the 1970s, when chemicals used in the process of food starch modification came under industry scrutiny. The minute that customers ultra-sensitive to negative consumable product publicity—baby food manufacturers, as a prime example—were connected to the use of starch products utilizing these “named” process chemicals, they instantly ceased use and returned all the bagged starch inventory to the supplier. The domino effect was amazing, even before the advent of the internet. Suddenly, the entire custom food starch industry came under pressure to replace said modifying agent with effective alternatives capable of passing an objective, consumer-friendly safety test. “Effectiveness” in the food industry is in the eye of the purchaser, and as you know, a supplier cannot just show up at the customer’s door one day with an untested replacement and begin taking orders.
Factored into the equation is also the importance of any scrutinized component or processing aid linked with the ability of the user to stay in production. In the case of the baby food manufacturer, they switched to native (unmodified) starch and lived with the impacts to end-product texture.
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