Okay, you shouldn't be eating it anyways: animal-shaped marshmallow in unnatural shades of yellow, blue and hot pink. Now, there might be another reason for some people to avoid PEEPs: they're made in China.
Happy Halloween!
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The maker of Peeps -- the fluffy, yellow, marshmallow chicks that have spawned a fanatical following -- has tapped an overseas manufacturer to make candies for the first time in the company's history.
Just Born Inc. is making its Spooky Friends treats for Halloween in China.
That could be a scary thought for American consumers concerned about products made in China, which has been hit by a series of recalls of substandard goods and lead-tainted toys. An August poll by The Associated Press found that most Americans believe the U.S. government is not doing enough to ensure that Chinese imports are safe.
Bethlehem-based Just Born said it was making the foray into outsourcing for the first time in its 84-year history because its plant in Bethlehem cannot individually wrap the Spooky Friends candies. The company found a factory in China that can do the job and meets their quality standards.
Privately-owned Just Born said it wanted to make sure there's demand for the product before investing in equipment to make the treats in the United States.
'It's expensive and we wanted to make sure we have a viable product before we'll source it here,' said Kathy Bassininski, vice president of brand development and corporate services.
Just Born has sold out this Halloween's entire inventory of Spooky Friends to retailers. The company will find out later whether shoppers went for the marshmallow candies, which come shaped like pumpkins, bats, ghosts, and spiders.
Just Born made the decision to test outsourcing last year, before the Chinese products scandals hit.
The candy maker said its popular Peeps and most of its other confectionery will continue to be manufactured in Pennsylvania.
National Confectioners Association spokeswoman Susan Fussell said it's not uncommon for candy makers to manufacture abroad, often in Canada and Mexico.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
I was a child worker!!
A British journalist visited a garment factory in New Delhi where kids as young as 10 were putting Gap labels on clothing.
Gap says it had not contracted with that factory and that a Gap contractor had subcontracted the work without the company's approval.
Gap, based in San Francisco, is generally viewed as a leader in manufacturing clothes that were made in factories with good working condition. It has a team of inspectors who make surprise visits to subcontractors' factories around the world. If it supposedly got snookered, you can only imagine how widespread the problem is at factories cranking out goods for smaller manufacturers.
Now don't get me wrong--all kids, everywhere are entitled to education and to be safe. But in many countries, it's only feasible for a host of reasons for families to educate their kids through grammar school or middle school. Families in India, China, Vietnam, Chile are struggling to even survive. Parents there face hard choices everyday. So is it realistic that Westerners expect all kids to be in school and out of the factories until they're 17?
I wonder if we Westerners romanticize childhood now that we can afford to as a developed country. When we first came to the U.S. my parents worked in garment shops that were owned by friends and relatives. They brought work home and I remember staying up late to help them cut thread and fix stitches. I'm sure some laws were being broken technically, but my parents really needed that money to feed us--and that meant me helping them. And that was right here in California.
India Activists Decry Gap Child Labor
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG – 3 hours ago
NEW DELHI (AP) — With Gap Inc. under fire for selling clothes made by children in India, activists and police raided a sweatshop in New Delhi where 14 boys were embroidering women's garments Monday, illustrating the widespread problem of child labor in the South Asian country.
The children were as young as 10, came from a poor farming district on the other side of the country, and said they had never been given promised wages for working up to 15 hours a day embroidering sequins onto the flowing saris worn by Indian women.
The working and living conditions in the sweatshop just blocks from where the Gap clothes were being made were grim — the boys were packed into a filthy room, sleeping on the same floor where they sewed all day.
"I don't want my money anymore. Now I want to go home," said a thin 15-year-old boy who gave his name only as Hatiquallah.
Speaking at a nearby police station after the raid, Hatiquallah said he had been brought to New Delhi three years ago by a man who promised him work — and money. He never told his parents he was leaving.
"I was waiting for my wages," he replied when asked why he stayed. "I don't want them now."
India's transformation in the past decade into an emerging global economic power has done little to alleviate the country's widespread poverty — and the problems that go along with it, such as child labor.
The government estimates that 13 million children work here, many of them in hazardous industries, such as glass making, where such labor has long been banned. Rights activists place the number as high as 60 million — one estimate has 20 percent of India's economy dependent on kids under the age of 14.
The scope of the problem was clear Monday in the warren of narrow and dark alleys in New Delhi's Shahpur Jat neighborhood, where the sari sweatshop was found just a few houses down from the now-shuttered operation that made Gap clothes.
"Every other house is like this — there are children working in small garment units," said a police officer involved in the raid, Birpal Singh.
Police said they believed the saris were for sale within India.
But the widespread use of child labor in India and the discovery that kids were making clothes for the Gap, which has 90 full-time inspectors who travel around the world, raises questions for India's garment exporting industry, a $10 billion a year business that grew by more than 20 percent last year.
Some of the biggest names in retailing make clothes in India, from Ralph Lauren to J.C. Penny. They all say that oversight of contractors is strict, but child's rights activists disagree.
"International companies hire subcontractors and then forget about it. There is no monitoring at all," said Bhuwan Ribhu, a lawyer who works with Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or the Save Childhood Movement.
For the kids themselves, the issue is not as clear cut as many outside India would imagine — many poor children are expected to work.
Sanjeev, an 11-year-old rescued Monday from the sweatshop, said his parents had sent him off to work in New Delhi two years ago. He had not heard from or seen them since, and was worried they would be upset with him for not sending any money home. "But I never got my wages," he said.
Monday's raid came a day after Britain's Observer newspaper reported that children as young as 10 were found sewing clothes for the Gap in a New Delhi factory. It quoted the children as saying they had been sold to the sweatshop by their impoverished families and were not paid.
Gap responded quickly, saying the factory was being run by a subcontractor who was hired in violation of Gap's policies, and none of the products made there will be sold in its stores.
Indian officials, in contrast, offered no comment on the Observer report.
But child's rights activists said it was just a small part of a bigger problem, as evidenced by Monday's raid.
"The biggest responsibility here lies with the Indian government — they don't develop a way of monitoring" factories, said Ribhu, the lawyer.
"Where the Gap is concerned, at least they've taken a good pro-active stand against the subcontractors," he added.
Ribhu's group organized Monday's raid, finding the sweatshop and tipping off police, who planned to question the boys and then hand them over to child welfare authorities.
Ribhu said he would push authorities to return the children to their families in eastern India.
Associated Press reporter Muneeza Naqvi contributed to this story.
Gap says it had not contracted with that factory and that a Gap contractor had subcontracted the work without the company's approval.
Gap, based in San Francisco, is generally viewed as a leader in manufacturing clothes that were made in factories with good working condition. It has a team of inspectors who make surprise visits to subcontractors' factories around the world. If it supposedly got snookered, you can only imagine how widespread the problem is at factories cranking out goods for smaller manufacturers.
Now don't get me wrong--all kids, everywhere are entitled to education and to be safe. But in many countries, it's only feasible for a host of reasons for families to educate their kids through grammar school or middle school. Families in India, China, Vietnam, Chile are struggling to even survive. Parents there face hard choices everyday. So is it realistic that Westerners expect all kids to be in school and out of the factories until they're 17?
I wonder if we Westerners romanticize childhood now that we can afford to as a developed country. When we first came to the U.S. my parents worked in garment shops that were owned by friends and relatives. They brought work home and I remember staying up late to help them cut thread and fix stitches. I'm sure some laws were being broken technically, but my parents really needed that money to feed us--and that meant me helping them. And that was right here in California.
India Activists Decry Gap Child Labor
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG – 3 hours ago
NEW DELHI (AP) — With Gap Inc. under fire for selling clothes made by children in India, activists and police raided a sweatshop in New Delhi where 14 boys were embroidering women's garments Monday, illustrating the widespread problem of child labor in the South Asian country.
The children were as young as 10, came from a poor farming district on the other side of the country, and said they had never been given promised wages for working up to 15 hours a day embroidering sequins onto the flowing saris worn by Indian women.
The working and living conditions in the sweatshop just blocks from where the Gap clothes were being made were grim — the boys were packed into a filthy room, sleeping on the same floor where they sewed all day.
"I don't want my money anymore. Now I want to go home," said a thin 15-year-old boy who gave his name only as Hatiquallah.
Speaking at a nearby police station after the raid, Hatiquallah said he had been brought to New Delhi three years ago by a man who promised him work — and money. He never told his parents he was leaving.
"I was waiting for my wages," he replied when asked why he stayed. "I don't want them now."
India's transformation in the past decade into an emerging global economic power has done little to alleviate the country's widespread poverty — and the problems that go along with it, such as child labor.
The government estimates that 13 million children work here, many of them in hazardous industries, such as glass making, where such labor has long been banned. Rights activists place the number as high as 60 million — one estimate has 20 percent of India's economy dependent on kids under the age of 14.
The scope of the problem was clear Monday in the warren of narrow and dark alleys in New Delhi's Shahpur Jat neighborhood, where the sari sweatshop was found just a few houses down from the now-shuttered operation that made Gap clothes.
"Every other house is like this — there are children working in small garment units," said a police officer involved in the raid, Birpal Singh.
Police said they believed the saris were for sale within India.
But the widespread use of child labor in India and the discovery that kids were making clothes for the Gap, which has 90 full-time inspectors who travel around the world, raises questions for India's garment exporting industry, a $10 billion a year business that grew by more than 20 percent last year.
Some of the biggest names in retailing make clothes in India, from Ralph Lauren to J.C. Penny. They all say that oversight of contractors is strict, but child's rights activists disagree.
"International companies hire subcontractors and then forget about it. There is no monitoring at all," said Bhuwan Ribhu, a lawyer who works with Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or the Save Childhood Movement.
For the kids themselves, the issue is not as clear cut as many outside India would imagine — many poor children are expected to work.
Sanjeev, an 11-year-old rescued Monday from the sweatshop, said his parents had sent him off to work in New Delhi two years ago. He had not heard from or seen them since, and was worried they would be upset with him for not sending any money home. "But I never got my wages," he said.
Monday's raid came a day after Britain's Observer newspaper reported that children as young as 10 were found sewing clothes for the Gap in a New Delhi factory. It quoted the children as saying they had been sold to the sweatshop by their impoverished families and were not paid.
Gap responded quickly, saying the factory was being run by a subcontractor who was hired in violation of Gap's policies, and none of the products made there will be sold in its stores.
Indian officials, in contrast, offered no comment on the Observer report.
But child's rights activists said it was just a small part of a bigger problem, as evidenced by Monday's raid.
"The biggest responsibility here lies with the Indian government — they don't develop a way of monitoring" factories, said Ribhu, the lawyer.
"Where the Gap is concerned, at least they've taken a good pro-active stand against the subcontractors," he added.
Ribhu's group organized Monday's raid, finding the sweatshop and tipping off police, who planned to question the boys and then hand them over to child welfare authorities.
Ribhu said he would push authorities to return the children to their families in eastern India.
Associated Press reporter Muneeza Naqvi contributed to this story.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Is Corporate Social Responsibility Dead?
Executives from around the globe are hunkering down at the Hyatt Hotel for the next few days to chew on corporate social responsibility.
China seems to be dominating the discussion. Mattel head honcho, Robert A. Eckert, was a keynote speaker. Didn't attend the session, but I'm sure he fielded lots of questions about their recent recall troubles.
There was also a panel discussing China's responsibility in Darfur.
I caught the end of a panel debating whether corporate social responsibility is on the outs. Spoke to one interesting panelist, a CSR consultant who's a Filipina working in Equatorial Africa. A lot of her clients are in Asia, mostly mining and mineral companies.
Her take is that with globalization, it's harder to be a good corporate citizen, since the context for it changes from place to place and culture to culture. She says some firms, especially if they're in China, look at competitors with fat bottom lines who trash the environment and wonder if they're hurting their bottom line playing by the rules.
I'm heading to the conference tomorrow. More to come.
China seems to be dominating the discussion. Mattel head honcho, Robert A. Eckert, was a keynote speaker. Didn't attend the session, but I'm sure he fielded lots of questions about their recent recall troubles.
There was also a panel discussing China's responsibility in Darfur.
I caught the end of a panel debating whether corporate social responsibility is on the outs. Spoke to one interesting panelist, a CSR consultant who's a Filipina working in Equatorial Africa. A lot of her clients are in Asia, mostly mining and mineral companies.
Her take is that with globalization, it's harder to be a good corporate citizen, since the context for it changes from place to place and culture to culture. She says some firms, especially if they're in China, look at competitors with fat bottom lines who trash the environment and wonder if they're hurting their bottom line playing by the rules.
I'm heading to the conference tomorrow. More to come.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Aussies come to Silicon Valley
"The world is flat, but some places are flatter than others. Namely Silicon Valley."
A French chief executive now in Silicon Valley told me that at a dinner party recently. He says that even with the rise of Silicon Valleys in the world, only this Valley has the tech trifecta: talent, innovation and venture capitalists in the backyard.
He's not alone.
Twelve tech companies from Australia are showing off their wares today in Sunnyvale to attract American customers and venture capital.
And earlier this week, 60 Mexican companies, mostly tech and biotech firms, were in the Valley to try out for 12 slots at TechBA, Mexico's incubator program in San Jose.
Christo Columbus would be proud.
A French chief executive now in Silicon Valley told me that at a dinner party recently. He says that even with the rise of Silicon Valleys in the world, only this Valley has the tech trifecta: talent, innovation and venture capitalists in the backyard.
He's not alone.
Twelve tech companies from Australia are showing off their wares today in Sunnyvale to attract American customers and venture capital.
And earlier this week, 60 Mexican companies, mostly tech and biotech firms, were in the Valley to try out for 12 slots at TechBA, Mexico's incubator program in San Jose.
Christo Columbus would be proud.
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