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Why You Don’t Outsource

CNN reports that Cadbury recalls Chinese-made candy in chemical scare

LONDON, England (CNN) — British confectioner Cadbury has recalled all of its Chinese-made candy products over fears they may be contaminated with the chemical melamine, a company statement said Monday.

The following 11 products are included in the recall, according to Hong Kong’s Centre for Food Safety:

• Cadbury Dark Chocette, 45 grams.
• Cadbury Dark Chocette, 80 grams.
• Cadbury Eclairs, 180 grams.
• Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate Pumpkin, 150 grams.
• Cadbury Dark Chocolate, 40 grams.
• Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate Bulk Pack, 5 kilograms.
• Cadbury Dark Chocolate Bulk Pack, 5 kilograms.
• Cadbury Dairy Milk Hazelnut Chocolate Bulk Pack, 5 kilograms.
• Cadbury Dairy Milk Cookies Chocolate Bulk Pack, 5 kilograms.
• Cadbury Hazelnut Praline Chocolate (2008 Chinese New Year), 312 grams.
• Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate (2008 Chinese New Year), 300 grams.

People won’t trust Cadbury after this. Years of “good will” have been thrown away over possible gains in profits.

26 comments

1 Steve Bates { 09.29.08 at 2:07 pm }

IMNSHO, milk chocolate is already toxic stuff, even without the melamine. But I’ll be sure to inform Stella.

(I’ll have to read the CNN article later. Their servers appear to be hammered in the wake of the House vote on the bailout.)

2 Bryan { 09.29.08 at 3:04 pm }

Of course it’s toxic, but I always had several Cadbury Fruit & Nut bars in my flight suit, because you can’t have too many wasted calories after bailing out.

3 Moi { 09.29.08 at 3:32 pm }

Oh, man. That sucks.

I love the Fruit & Nut bars, too. Hub likes the Royal Dark. Luckily neither of them are on the list. 😉 But I KWYM, do you know anyone who buys Menu cat/dog foods any more?

4 Kryten42 { 09.29.08 at 7:40 pm }

I only like the 70% – 90% pure cocoa choc’s. 🙂 And being diabetic, that’s all I can eat anyway. So I’m safe for the Cadbury’s poison (which I never liked anyway). LOL

I like Lindt and a few others. 🙂

5 hipparchia { 09.29.08 at 8:13 pm }

still the best for cookies, otherwise i’m spoiled — chocolate bars, chocolate bars, chocolate bars. and the darker, the better.

6 Bryan { 09.29.08 at 8:34 pm }

I bought it in Britain, which is not the same as the version sold in the US, and, yes, Lindt makes great products, and a dear friend who has gone used to send me the best from her Swiss factory, so I know “good” chocolate, rather than milk chocolate, but these were survival rations, so the maximum number of calories was important [that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.] Besides, it had raisins and nuts so it was obviously healthy.

They keep outsourcing these products, and when you do you lose control. It is an incredibly stupid thing to do with your product line when you aren’t selling a necessity.

7 cookie jill { 09.30.08 at 12:09 am }

I’ll still enjoy the commericals with the cluckin’ bunny, though. The Fruit and Nuts bar was the best.

8 Bryan { 09.30.08 at 12:26 am }

I don’t believe that they risked their reputation to cut costs.

9 Kryten42 { 09.30.08 at 1:22 am }

Sure… I know about survival rations! LOL We had some kind of protein/carbo/vitamin/mineral bars designed in some lab somewhere at one of the poles where everything tastes like fish (they were amusingly called *food*). My team were reprimanded (and I was almost court-marshaled, but they needed my team bigtime) in Cambodia because we raided a depot and *liberated* a truck load for the villagers. They’d been sitting there months, and would probably still be sitting there. Nobody ever accused the Military of being generous (or smart for that matter), wasteful and short-sighted… yes. We always took extra rations (or whenever we could steal any, real food) for the villagers. I was proud of my team. 🙂

Ahhh… those memories again.

10 AndyB { 09.30.08 at 5:54 am }

I’m sitting in Asia right now with two blocks of 150grm DairyMilk in the frig and not sure what to do with them.
I don’t know what ‘Chocolate Pumpkin’ means … I can’t find a decent description anywhere on the web for the bars in my frig so wrote to Cadbury in Aus, where these bars have it written on the packaging that they were produced. But, I’m confused – are they produced in Australia or are they made in China?

I’m pretty angry.

11 Bryan { 09.30.08 at 10:48 am }

That sounds like the US “cereal bars” which tended to taste like “flight suit” in very short order. There is nothing worse than having supplies sitting at a depot when people need them. People know that they are there and it build resentment. We had the same problem after Katrina, and a Mississippi sheriff got in trouble when he took some deputies and a truck to a FEMA depot and “stole” the supplies his county needed after trying to get them for a week.

You’re not worth much in a war zone if you don’t know how to “liberate” what you need.

Andy, based on past Cadbury products I would assume that the “Pumpkins” are special items for Halloween that are either shaped like a pumpkin or have pumpkin imprints. I sounds like you have the standard large bars of milk chocolate, which don’t seem to be in the recall.

Update: From ABC Cadbury Chocolate Eclairs are the only product that is imported to Australia that is on the list for recall.

12 Kryten42 { 09.30.08 at 11:14 am }

Well… The minor mistake we made was that we liberated these from a US depot! LMAO

US Military has no sense of humor. Or Justice. Even though these depot’s were *supposedly* under UN jurisdiction, and the supplies *supposedly* were their for the people. *sigh* It just pissed me off (and my team). So, we did something about it. We only got found out because the locals thought we were all on the same side and didn’t understand the, errm… *fine* distinctions between US-Aus-UN relations. 😉 Come to think of it… none of us understood any of that either! LOL *shrug*

Ahem. 😉 I must admit… I was grinning for weeks after every time I thought about it. 😉 Hell… I still do! LOL

I think you are right about the Cadbury’s here in Aus Bryan. I saw that on the ABC last night. They also had a report that some int’l organization (I forget which) had finished an audit and gave our major banks a clean bill of financial health status. 🙂

13 Bryan { 09.30.08 at 2:20 pm }

Yeah, like Americans never “borrow” anything from other people’s depots. 😉

I know know, we should all get along – just like Patton and Montgomery in WWII 😈

[There needs to be standards for military paint colors, it’s damn hard to paint over unit markings when you can’t match the colors.]

If your banks got a clean bill expect a lot of deposits. People are shifting money around by the billions without regard to the currency.

14 Kryten42 { 09.30.08 at 9:26 pm }

Oh yeah… It’s as old as human time. 🙂 The politics of war mean nothing to the people actually fighting the battles. The enemy doesn’t give a rats about the uniform we wear. Made no difference to them if we had the UN blue, or US or Aus or any other nation in the force’s colors. We knew that the supplies were being used as political pawns by *our* side to put pressure on *their* side. So what if the fine points of politics are lost on the millions of poor people in the middle who were starving to death, literally.

The truth is, the Politicians were just using the life and death of millions as political pawns to score points. Sometimes, a very minor or cheap point. In ancient times, the Kings, Emperors and military leaders fought the battles with their troops. Now, the only time they face any danger is if they get mugged on the way home after a hard day playing with the lives of countless people they now nothing about and could care less about. And I blame all Nations BTW. We are all the same, there are some distinctions perhaps, but to the people in the middle, they are generally moot.

In Cambodia, I made friends with US, UK, German, and other troops. We were all in the same danger, and we didn’t care about the Politics of any of it. We wanted to survive, and we all wanted to help the poor bastards we saw almost every day who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Made us all angry when we would go into a village and the villagers would naively think we were their to protect them. And then we would be gone, and some local warlord would slaughter them all just to make the other village’s understand the price of even being near us. That was the reality. Not points and lines on a map, or some political scorecard a thousand miles away. We even gave some villagers weapons and supplies and some training in the hope some might survive, and we got in big trouble for that too. *shrug*

So, if anyone wants to know why I think almost all politicians and Military *leaders* would look better with a red hot cattle prod shoved where the sun doesn’t shine, that’s why. 🙂 It also may explain why I have a few… issues with *authority*. At least, that’s what my psych eval after Cambodia said. 😉 LOL I think that almost everyone (with a few potential exceptions, after an exhaustive review) who wants to be a politician or General, should just be shot to save the World a whole lot of pain. 🙂 Look at the mess today and tell me you don’t think so. 😉 Not all are bad, but too many are, and the decent ones have no hope of doing anything positive. *shrug*

“What a World!”(tm)

Oops! Another K42 rant. Brought to you on behalf of the millions of poor bastards everywhere who don’t have any say in anything! 🙂

15 hipparchia { 09.30.08 at 9:53 pm }

a few issues with authority, eh? too bad there aren’t more like you, k42.

16 Bryan { 09.30.08 at 10:52 pm }

Let’s hear it for the “collateral damage” which sounds a lot better than “we really screwed up and killed the wrong people”.

The military doesn’t do “hearts and minds”. It takes an entirely different mindset to pull off that mission, and you can’t send in people who were trained to react with deadly force if anything is out of the ordinary and expect people to love you. You have to start with people at boot camp and train them to do the job. Nobody does that. First they train them to kill, and then they tell them to violate all of their finely honed skills and avoid killing. It doesn’t work, and can’t work.

The UN needs to create their own peacekeeping force with other nations supplying logistics support. That’s the only sane way for doing it, which why it will never happen.

One of the things I enjoyed about Terry Pratchett’s send up of Australia, The Last Continent, was the bit about immediately after someone was elected Prime Minister, they threw him in prison as it saved a lot of time and they knew where to find him if it was really necessary.

17 Kryten42 { 10.01.08 at 12:44 am }

The problem, Bryan, is that in this case it wasn’t just the normal military stupidity causing ‘Collateral Damage’, this was political planning at it’s best. It was no accident.

LOL Yes… I’ve used that Pratchett quote a few times. 😉 😀 And speaking of that fine author, I’ve been moving all my storage boxes to a new storage shed over the past week. And whilst checking the contents and making a list, I found a few Discworld novels I’d forgotten I had (I had to sell all my books years ago to cover medical expenses, but a few escaped). 🙂 I’m trying to decide if I’ll read ‘The Fifth Elephant (and strangely, I just watched one of my fave movies, ‘The Fifth Element’ last Sat.) or ‘Carpe Jugulum’. I like Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, 😉 LOL Hmmm…. Think I’ll read Fifth Elephant first. 😉 I like Capt. Vimes of the City Watch, errr… Sir Vimes now! And Carrot, the 6’6″ dwarf! 😉 LOL

Anyone who hasn’t read Discworld…. REALLY should! If you understand the satire & irony, you may just learn something. 😉

Hipparchia: Be careful what you wish for my friend! 😉 You may just get it! LOL I doubt the World could handle many more of *me*. There wouldn’t be many left after the flames die down! LMAO 😉

18 Bryan { 10.01.08 at 1:32 am }

I understood exactly what you were saying and there were a lot of “collateral damage” incidences that definitely weren’t accidental. When your target coordinates are changed, that isn’t an accident after the third time it happens. It is either a serious security breach or someone higher up playing games that will be blamed on you until there is an investigation, and you have to call for an investigation.

It’s amazing how those “mistakes” stop after you raise hell and call the Inspector General. You get a little annoyed when you are trying to take out people who are shooting at you and they are the only ones who don’t get hit.

Actually Rincewind is the only major character I’ve never really liked. He’s such a wuss.

19 Kryten42 { 10.01.08 at 12:09 pm }

Ahhh! You are surly right there, and we are in agreement! Yup! Been there… *sigh* And I should have known you would know. Apologies. I’m a bit slow lately. *SIGH* If you know where I can get a new brain cheap… let me know! 😉

LOL @ Rincewind (The rincer of winds)… Yeah, a wuss! But an amazingly lucky wuss! 😉 But, I did like his Luggage! LOL 😉 Hmmm… what was the name of that guy who was the Discworld’s only ‘Tourist’ that the Luggage belonged to originally?

I liked Hex, the ‘computer’ too! LOL

I have Nanny Ogg’s book of Recipe’s! Maybe I should post a few? 😉 LOL Some of the ingredients might be a tad hard to find though. 😉

20 Bryan { 10.01.08 at 7:24 pm }

Two Flower was the tourist from the Aurient.

Hex, powered by “anthill”.

Nanny Ogg has the world’s best cat. Greebo is what every tom cat aspires to.

21 Kryten42 { 10.01.08 at 10:52 pm }

LOL Right!! 😀

Greebo is a fictional character in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. He is first introduced in Wyrd Sisters. He is a foul-tempered one-eyed grey tomcat whose human, Nanny Ogg, insists against all the evidence that he is a sweet, harmless kitten. In the course of the books, he has killed two vampires, eating at least one of them in the novel Witches Abroad:

The bat squirmed under his claw. It seemed to Greebo’s small cat brain that it was trying to change its shape, and he wasn’t having any of that from a mouse with wings on.

And in Maskerade, Magrat recalls when Greebo once killed an elk.

In Lords and Ladies, Greebo’s overall attitude is best described in an allusion to Schrödinger’s cat:

Greebo had spent an irritating two minutes in that box. Technically, a cat locked in a box may be alive or it may be dead. You never know until you look. In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.

Shawn dived sideways as Greebo went off like a Claymore mine.

“Don’t worry about him,” said Magrat dreamily, as the elf flailed at the maddened cat. “He’s just a big softy.”

Wikipedia: Greebo

There’s a Wiki for everything! 😉 LOL

22 Kryten42 { 10.01.08 at 11:15 pm }

Oh… I should have added this link also. Forgot… *sigh*

It’s the official Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki. 🙂 This is their ‘Greebo’ wiki entry:
Discworld & Pratchett Wiki: Greebo

Greebo is Nanny Ogg’s tomcat, he is feared in the forests of Lancre by all animals, and he is the father of most of the cat population in the area. Flea bitten, with scars all over his face and his partially present ears he is a huge swaggering bully of a cat – renowned for once chasing a bear up a tree. He has one green eye and one which is milky white, he is intelligent for a cat but uses three categories to define the things he sees: ‘rape,fight or eat’. This is the cat that Nanny Ogg refers to as ‘Mr. Puss-puss’ and sees in her head as a cute little bundle of fluff – yet everyone else calls ‘gerroffyerbugger!!’

23 Bryan { 10.01.08 at 11:35 pm }

Greebo is the sort you want on your side… in front of you… in full daylight.

He reminds me of Torch, our cat at the farm in upstate New York. Our German Shepherd lived in fear of Torch. Torch had a playful trick – attempting to leap on your head from the landing of the stairwell when you went into the kitchen. The best plan was to catch Torch mid-leap and pitch her far enough away that you got into the kitchen and shut the door.

My Mother thought Torch was “an old softie” too, and she was world-class rodent control on a farm.

24 hipparchia { 10.02.08 at 12:30 am }

i adopted curmudgeon cat from the pound because he was the only one there who alternately crouched in the back of his cage growling and ran to the front of the cage screaming, hissing, and clawing at whoever walked by. i knew he was destined for the landfill.

he and the dog are best buds, he loves his vet, he’s an absolute marshmallow to anyone who comes to visit me, but has chased off prowlers in the night [no banshee ever screached better than that], beat up rottweilers, and stopped cars dead in their tracks.

25 Bryan { 10.02.08 at 1:03 am }

Some cats just have a lot of “personality” that some people just can’t appreciate.

26 hipparchia { 10.02.08 at 1:17 am }

yep. i’m very fortunate that his values align mostly with mine [vets, dog, visitors good, prowlers bad]