Cracking the Pistachio Shell

Alright, I admit it. I understand it’s not good to be exposed to
salmonella, but when the news was about baby milk, and even
peanuts, it still did not really hit home for me. Now, pistachio
nuts are a different issue! Call me selfish, but I love my
pistachios. In fact, even my dog loves them. What makes the news
even worse is that I bought a five pound bag at Costco the day
before the announcement. Though it appears that the Costco brand is
not impacted, I do hesitate to eat them.  I started to look up
the side effects of the disease to see what the symptoms are. As a
child I used to have severe asthma attacks when I would eat
lobsters. I used to take my medication before I would eat them. I
love lobsters so much that I always thought they were worth the
attack. Somehow I thought the same crazy logic might apply to my
eating pistachios.

What is different about this warning though is the proactive nature
taken by Setton Farms of Terra Bella, Calif., which ships 600
million pounds of pistachio nuts each year, in announcing this to
the public. There was no FDA inspection finding, nor fraudulent
report. They simply practiced old fashioned good ethical business.
By being proactive, they will still take a branding hit, but the
positive effects long term are more rewarding. The level of social
responsibility that the company took to announce the warning is
highly commendable and puts a little bit more faith back in the
common good. 

It is now reported that the FDA will do some more testing on the
facility. Streamlining the process and information flow from the
internal testing to the consumer shelf was greatly reduced causing
possibly hundreds of attacks to be avoided and mitigating greater
risks to Setton Farms. The amount of content described in blogs,
e-mails, instant messages, articles, portals and other Internet
based content was tremendous. Mining this content for competitive
positioning, product improvement, marketing activities, or even
customer loyalty is becoming the next battleground. However, using
it for social responsibility content dissemination is simply a rare
and positive note these days.