Galen Weston who controls Canada's largest supermarket
company is trying to pull his foot out of his mouth after dissing farmers’
markets during a speech to an audience of high-powered food-industry leaders in
Toronto..
“Farmers’ markets are great. . . ,” Weston said
Tuesday during a speech to about 600 people at the Metro Toronto Convention
Centre, but added: “One day they’re going to kill some people though.”
“I’m just saying that to be dramatic though,” he
quickly added.
But some audience members were reminding each other
during the coffee break that Weston’s supermarkets sold the lion’s share of
cold cuts from Maple Leaf Foods Inc. that were contaminated with Listeria
monocytogenes bacteria and sickened hundreds and resulted in 23 deaths in 2008.
Not one death has been attributed to food poisoning in
products purchased from Canada’s
175 farners; markets.
They are, incidentially, increasing in number and
sales volume faster than Loblaws which has struggled with supply-chain
management issues over the last four years.
Robert Chorney, the executive director of Farmers’ Markets Ontario, spoke
later at the same conference and said “we strenuously object” to Weston’s remark, he told the
delegates. “That was awful.”
Others, trying to put a generous spin on Weston’s
comments, excused them as “off the cuff” and relating to food safety in general
and were not an invidious comparison with supermarkets.
“I think
his speech, by and large, was very eloquent and he has a lot to say,” said
cookbook author Anita Stewart who has done much to promote farmers markets and
locally-grown food.. “I think he just slipped up and I truly don’t believe that
he meant it.”
Weston will, no doubt, never live down the quote that was on the front page of The Toronto Star, Canada's largest-circulation newspaper, today. He's right up there now with Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz who, in the midst of the Maple Leaf disaster, quipped it's "death by 1,000 cold cuts".
I guess we also can figure out that Weston has realized that his real hot competition is not coming from Wal-Mart, but from farmers' markets. Maybe if Loblaws had treated farmers fairly, they wouldn't have felt it necessary to put so much time, energy and investment into retailing their products themselves.
