“I’m sorry you feel that way” is the super-supreme of backhanded apologies.

“I’m having an affair with a younger, hotter, smarter person and want a divorce.”
“That’s really hurtful.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“I’ve appreciated working with you for 20 years but am going to join a startup and cash in on all our corporate secrets because you have bad breath.”
“That’s really ungrateful.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“I’d like to invite you, as a valued food blogger, to Sotto Terra, an intimate and underground Italian restaurant in New York City, where you will enjoy a delicious four-course meal hosted by George Duran, the chef who hosts the Ultimate Cake Off on TLC and learn about food trends from a food industry analyst, Phil Lempert. But really we’re going to serve Three Meat and Four Cheese Lasagna and Razzleberry Pie, by Marie Callender’s, a frozen line from ConAgra Foods, and record your reaction on hidden camera.”
“That’s really deceitful.”
“(We) understand that there were people who were disappointed and we’re sorry — we apologize that they felt that way.”

The last one actually happened.

The backhanded apology came from PR-type Jackie Burton at the Ketchum public relations unit of the Omnicom Group, hired by ConAgra to orchestrate the stunt.

As usual, ConAgra is behind the times. The bloggers were having none of it and took to the Intertubes to vent their gastronomic rage.

As reported in the N.Y. Times:

“Our entire meal was a SHAM!” wrote Suzanne Chan, founder of Mom Confessionals, in a blog post after the event. “We were unwilling participants in a bait-and-switch for Marie Callender’s new frozen three cheese lasagna and there were cameras watching our reactions.”

On FoodMayhem.com, a blog by Lon Binder and Jessica Lee Binder, Mr. Binder wrote that during a discussion led by Mr. Lempert before the meal, Mr. Binder spoke against artificial ingredients while Ms. Binder mentioned being allergic to food coloring. When the lasagna arrived, Ms. Binder was served a zucchini dish, while Mr. Binder was served lasagna.

“We discussed with the group the sad state of chemical-filled foods,” wrote Mr. Binder. “And yet, you still fed me the exact thing I said I did not want to eat.” (Among the ingredients in the lasagna: sodium nitrate, BHA, BHT, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate.)

On the evening she attended, Cindy Zhou wrote on her blog, Chubby Chinese Girl, that during the pre-meal discussion, she “pointed out that the reason I ate organic, fresh and good food was because my calories are very precious to me, so I want to use them wisely. … Yet they were serving us a frozen meal, loaded with sodium.” (An 8-ounce serving of the lasagna contains 860 milligrams of sodium, 36 percent of the recommended daily allowance.) I’m NOT their target consumer and they were totally off by thinking I would buy or promote their highly processed frozen foods after tricking me to taste it.”

Four years ago next month, ConAgra Banquet pot pies sickened at least 272 people in 35 states with salmonella. When the outbreak was initially announced, Con Agra said, don’t worry, just follow the instructions and everything will be fine.

Those instructions sucked. And didn’t work, as shown in my kitchen-experiment at the time. So ConAgra finally decided to recall the suspect pies, changed a few things, and everyone went back to sleep.

In June 2010 a variety of ConAgra’s Marie Callender frozen food thingies sickened at least 29 people in 14 states with salmonella.

And now this month, the entire PR apparatus of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the International Food Information Council, and the other usual suspects is using its bully pulpit of Consumer Food Safety Education month to tell consumers that when it comes to frozen meals, ‘cook it safe.’

The press materials are akin to a users manual for a $0.50 pot pie. And if someone gets sick, it’s their own fault for not knowing how to properly measure the wattage of their microwave using a measuring cup, water and ice (did MacGyver write the instructions?)

Officially, USDA gave up blaming consumers for cooking mishaps with ground beef back in 1994 as E. coli O157:H7 burst onto the scene. Not so with frozen thingies.

“Frozen or refrigerated convenience foods are popular items in many Americans’ homes, but there are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to cooking these foods,” said FSIS Administrator Al Almanza. “Some of them can be microwaved, but others can’t. The ‘Cook It Safe’ campaign is designed to heighten awareness of this problem and correct misconceptions, putting an end to needless, preventable illnesses.”

If consumers get sick and have grudges about complicated instructions, the lack of clear differentiation between raw, frozen meals and cooked, frozen meals, and questions about why raw hazardous ingredients are in frozen meals, no worries: everyone will be really sorry you feel that way.

Until three years ago, Kenneth Maxwell enjoyed Banquet chicken and turkey pot pies so much he ate them three or four times a week. They were easy to prepare, and Maxwell could eat one for lunch and quickly return to work as an electrician.

When cases of salmonella poisoning led the pies' manufacturer, ConAgra Foods, to issue a product recall in the fall of 2007, Maxwell did not hear about it and continued to eat them. He bought several pot pies about two weeks after the recall was launched, when they should have been pulled from store shelves, and became violently ill, he said.

Steve Mills of the Chicago Tribune reports this morning that Maxwell's experience reflects common problems with food recalls: They routinely fail to recover all of the product they seek and, according to experts, sometimes even leave tainted foods in stores, putting consumers at risk of becoming ill from potentially deadly foodborne pathogens.

If consumers are suffering from recall fatigue, what about retailers who are supposed to get potentially contaminated product off the shelves?

Communications about recalls with both the public and retailers, must be rapid, reliable, repeated and relevant, and that the produce outbreaks of 2006 marked significant changes in how recall stories were being told on Internet-based networking like YouTube, wikipedia, and blogs.

The Tribune story says a spokesman for Jewel-Osco's corporate parent said relying on the media, posting shelf notices and making sure store employees are prepared to answer customers' questions all have worked with recalls in the past.

Safeway, the parent of Dominick's food stores, contacts shoppers directly in some recalls — typically smaller ones, said spokesman Brian Dowling. But in larger recalls, he said the company's stores rely on other methods to get the word out, such as notices on store shelves and stories in newspapers and on TV and radio.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently released the Government's Products Recall app for the Android smartphone at USA.gov website.

And it will be the same boring message. Marshall McLuhan famously said “The medium is the message” (that’s him above, right, in a scene from the movie, Annie Hall). With food safety recalls, it’s the medium and the message, if you want to get people’s attention.

The Maxwells said they have not eaten a Banquet pot pie since the recall.
 

SpaghettiOs have far greater cultural resonance than some fancy pants Marie Callender’s frozen dinner thingies. Who didin’t love SpaghettiOs as a kid, like Stay Puft Marshmallows (right, exactly as shown).

It’s the best explanation I have for why the SpaghettiOs story, involving a product which was recalled but has made no one sick, is getting far more media attention than the frozen food – which has made at least 30 people sick and highlights an on-going problem with the frozen, not-ready-to-eat products proliferating at grocery stores.

For Father’s Day, Amy went out for a couple of hours while Sorenne was sleeping and picked up a couple of those Marie Callender frozen pot pies; not the recalled ones but some others. It was a gift.

None of the material provided by ConAgra or state and federal health types has accurately described the product: do these pot pies contain raw ingredients and therefore need to be cooked to a temperature-verified 165 F, and if they do contain raw ingredients, why?

The label on Marie Callender’s Chicken Pot Pie says it’s made from scratch – does that mean all the salmonella and campylobacter is included – and to keep frozen and must be cooked thoroughly.

The box containing the fancy pants pot pie says to microwave in nothing less than an 1100W microwave (if you can figure out where to determine a microwave’s wattage) for a long time. And use a meat thermometer.

I look forward to the publication in a peer-reviewed journal regarding consumers’ response and understanding of the new groovy labels that say use a meat thermometer to verify a pot pie is cooked. I did it, but I’m a nerd (left).

ConAgra, are raw ingredients being used or was this another failure in your awesome HACCP program?

After ConAgra’s Banquet pot pie mess of 2007 which sickened 400, why are these companies still using raw salmonella-stained ingredients in their pot pies, regardless of the fancy pants label.

Politicians don’t help, somehow equating the two incidents and using them for political leverage. Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro said Friday, with a straight face.

“These recalls are very disturbing considering that the timeframe in which the SpaghettiOs were produced spans nearly two years. The volume of potentially dangerous products is significant, and it is frightening that millions of children may have unknowingly consumed these recalled products given the popularity of SpaghettiOs among kids. While these recalls and investigations are still ongoing, I look forward to learning from USDA about the circumstances that allowed two years of potentially dangerous foods to enter the market place.”

It was a manufacturing problem that was eventually caught, probably by the company and not the U.S. Department of Agriculture. No one is sick; it’s precautionary. But way to invoke kids and fear.

“This recall, combined with the recall of the Marie Callender’s frozen meals that have sickened over two dozen people in 14 states, serves as a reminder that after we must begin the process of reviewing how the food safety system at USDA should be reformed.”

Political opportunism. What must be reformed is the way companies – and it’s frequently ConAgra – process and produce these frozen chicken dinner thingies and they should stop blaming consumers. Lawsuits and embarrassment work far faster than political change.

We had roast chicken for dinner -- the temp was at 165F by the time it was served.

ConAgra CEO thingy Gary Rodkin is on a quest

A quest to find what he calls "the big, singular insight that will drive behavior change." If he can do that, he can boost the bottom line (which was $978 million on revenue of $12.7 billion in the fiscal year ended May 31). Rodkin is using theories about buying habits--backed by $399 million a year in advertising, marketing and in-store promotions--to convince grocery stores to provide ample shelves for its 45 consumer brands, which include Chef Boyardee, Healthy Choice, Hebrew National, Wesson and Swiss Miss.

I have a suggestion. Don’t make people barf, with your Banquet pot pies and your peanut butter. Seriously, $399 million in advertising, and you can’t promise people they won’t barf?

And the best guest speaker you can get is me naked in New Zealand (cost to ConAgra bottom line – nothing).