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Try not to visualize it, but poultry company Pilgrim's Pride has recalled 27.4 million pounds of its Wampler brand turkey and chicken. That's the largest meat recall in U.S. history (now there's something for the Pilgrims to be proud of), but not by much. Hudson Foods took back 25 million pounds of hamburger in 1997 in an E. coli scare. So, who wants a nice bowl of pasta for lunch?

The USDA had been investigating an outbreak of listeria, an infection that's particularly rough on kids, pregnant women, people with weakened immune systems, and the elderly. The agency inspected a Pilgrim's Pride plant in Pennsylvania, and some poultry tested positive (disgusting, but alliterative). The company first recalled 295,000 pounds of fowl, then upped the ante to every cooked deli product it's made since May.

Consumer and food safety groups decided this looked like a job for the Lunchmeat Avengers, and got their agenda into the mainstream press with surprising effectiveness. The USDA tests for listeria but doesn't require meat-processing plants to run their own routine tests. The L.A. Times said consumer groups blamed the USDA, while Reuters and Knight-Ridder had them pointing fingers more specifically at the Bush administration. Proposed listeria regulations (written "by" or "during" the Clinton administration, depending what you read) have been sitting idle since May 2001. Consumer advocates haven't gotten this much press since Ralph Nader ran for president.

The New York Times also talked to environmental activists, who railed against huge feedlots and slaughterhouses whose sheer mass may increase the chance of contamination. They may be right, but since cooking meat to 160 degrees kills the listeria bacteria, treatment of live animals isn't much of an issue in this particular case, which involves only cooked meat. Listeria can land on cooked meat in between cooking and packaging. While we're wallowing in minutiae, we'll note that many outlets said the listeria strain that caused the recent outbreak is different from the strain the USDA found at Pilgrim's, but not everyone included a USDA spokesman's hedge: "We don't have any scientific evidence at this point that there is a connection, but our analysis of sampling in that plant is not complete."

OK, nitpicking's over, now on to the greenbacks. Pilgrim's Pride said its insurance will cover the voluntary recall and there shouldn't be a substantial effect on company finances, though in the short term, investors chickened out (sorry) and sold. Papers in search of the local business angle generally found calm grocery stores and indifferent consumers. Perhaps food diseases don't cause anxiety unless there's a catchy name, like "mad cow." Murky turkey? Stricken chicken? Sorry again. - Jen Muehlbauer

USDA Criticized Over Bacteria Testing
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-recall15oct15,0,5769432.story

Lax food policies blamed in recall (Reuters)
http://www.freep.com/money/business/consum15_20021015.htm

Listeria scare chills consumers, markets (Knight-Ridder)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?P2CE35322

Consumer Groups Accuse U.S. of Negligence on Food Safety
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/15/national/15RECA.html

Listeria fear prompts largest U.S. meat recall
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-10-13-wampler-recall_x.htm

Montco poultry plant scrubs amid recall
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/4285575.htm

Pilgrim's Pride says recall won't affect finances (Reuters)
http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2002/10/14/rtr750317.html

Deli-meat recall has little effect on area stores (Press of Atlantic City)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?K4BE25322

A grass-roots campaign orchestrated by a PR department is commonly called "astroturf." What shall we call Microsoft's embarrassing sally at Apple's successful "Switchers" campaign? Let's consider "paid testimonial."

Apple's campaign features real people, who give their names, who have switched from Windows to Macintosh. They don't look like models, they look like geeks, nerds, and ordinary folks, and they speak in their own voices. Some of them, such as Ellen Feiss, have become minor celebrities. Microsoft's campaign by contrast had all the polish of, well, a Microsoft ad campaign, as the Register pointed out.

No one expects Apple's ads to swing much market share, but perhaps Microsoft was feeling their sting. On Monday the company posted a Web page, "Confessions of a Mac to PC convert," supposedly written by a young woman who had switched from Apple to Windows XP. Her name was not given. Her picture, as Slashdot posters quickly discovered, was a stock image available for purchase from Getty's Photodisc. (Why the agency did not use an image from the competing Corbis service, owned by Bill Gates, is another mystery.)

Microsoft quickly pulled the ad page from its site (though it is still available in Google's cache), expressing "regret," according to CNET News.com, followed an investigation by that organ. Microsoft's climbdown may also have had something to do with investigative reporting by the AP's Ted Bridis, who identified the author of the Microsoft story and interviewed her. She works for the ad agency that created the campaign. Bridis found her name hidden in a Microsoft Word document associated with the ad campaign; not even Unspun needs to point out that irony. A Slashdot poster noticed that you can still download this document from its original location on the Microsoft site. At Unspun's press time this was still true.

In this season when Microsoft and AOL are touting shiny new versions of their online services to entice holiday shoppers, we leave the final word to yet another sharp-eyed Slashdot commentator. "In 1994 AOL published a slick 30-page promotional brochure profiling four new members. They also made them up." - Keith Dawson

(Ellen Feiss fan site)
http://www.ellenfeiss.net/

MS pulls fake Mac-to-Windows testimonial
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/27595.html

Microsoft PR Rep is the Switcher
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/10/15/0044255.shtml?tid=109

(Photodisc/Getty stock photo from the ad)
http://tinyurl.com/1z9q

(Cached copy of Microsoft ad)
http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:JmwQcVoG-ucJ:www.microsoft.com/

Microsoft "regrets" Mac-to-PC ad
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-961994.html

Microsoft zaps Mac attack ad; Shoreline woman is mystery convert (Seattle Times, AP)
http://tinyurl.com/1zpi

(Download the ad's feedback form in Word format)
http://microsoft.com/insider/downloads/ShowOffYourSkills.doc

AOL and MSN at It Again With Dueling Launches (Reuters)
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-tech-aol-msn.html

AOL Lies: New Member Guide (1994)
http://www.aolwatch.org/newmem.htm

Partial Plea of Guilty Seen for Ex-Chief of ImClone
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/15/business/15DRUG.html

Citigroup in loan battle
http://www.nydailynews.com/business/story/27054p-25680c.html

Mass. gets a tripling of claims of workplace maternity bias (Boston Globe)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?S5AE42322

AOL Hopes New Software Will Slow MSN Threat
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25379-2002Oct14.html

Like striking it rich, being 'almost homeless' can happen to anyone (SF Chronicle)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?X4EE22B12

Huge losses seen again for airlines
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/4287904.htm

Internet Society Picked As Manager of '.org'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25445-2002Oct14.html

MusicNet, Pressplay Nearing License Deals With Music Firms
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1034632657311611076,00.html
(Paid subscription required)

Pressplay in Licensing Deal With BMG
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-rup15.7oct15,0,4319480.story

Is 'Dell Dude' Steven Done For?
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-media-advertising-dell.html

Bad time to invest, poll says
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/4287915.htm

Hughes, News Corp. Discuss Latin American Cooperation
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB103463532748868636,00.html
(Paid subscription required.)

Working to Regroup Around Technology
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/15/business/15GROU.html

Copyedited by Jim Duffy (jimduffy86@yahoo.com).

Advertising: Erik Vanderkolk (erikvanderkolk@yahoo.com).

Editor and publisher: Jimmy Guterman (guterman@vineyard.com).

Media Unspun is produced by The Vineyard Group Inc.
Copyright 2002 Media Unspun, Inc., and The Vineyard Group, Inc.
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