ConAgra

I'm with you Amy. I copied your letter to ConAgra over from the Take Action Forum, so members can also reply from here. If you're replying from the Take Action Forum, scroll down the "ConAgra - Let's Get Started" thread and I will post Amy's letter at the bottom of the thread.
We're targeting ConAgra this week, in response to many member discussions about reactions to ConAgra products, which aren't safe for people with peanut/tree-nut allergies, but aren't labeled accordingly. Furthermore, ConAgra currently has no protocol in place for reporting reactions - they deny that their products are responsible for any reactions, and they have been known to intimidate and/or ridicule food allergic persons attempting to report reactions.
If you'd like to help us educate ConAgra in allergy awareness, please copy this letter and paste it into your e-mail. You are certainly most welcome to use your own wording, or share your own experiences instead! Amy has provided the links below the letter to click on. Please try to contact all the subsidiaries listed, so we can really have an impact.
Please insert the brand name of the product you are asking about into Question #1. Since ConAgra has so many subsidiaries, we are only focusing on Heathy Choice, Swiss Miss, Kid Cuisine and Banquet at this time. These seem to be the worst products for reactions. Thanks everyone and good luck!
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Dear _______:
I am a member of PeanutAllergy.com, an online community that serves individuals and families of individuals who are allergic to peanuts, and frequently other foods as well (most often tree nuts).
In light of recent FDA findings about food manufacturing processes and cross-contamination, we are attempting to help our members make safe and enlightened shopping choices. This is especially important because most of our members are parents shopping for children. Would you consider having a company representative post an online response to the following questions?
1. Does (brand name) use labelling to warn consumers of the presence of major allergens (such as peanuts, tree nuts, dairy, wheat, etc.)?
2. Do your labels indicate the possibility of cross-contamination, where it exists?
3. Do you include toll-free numbers for consumers to call with allergy/nutrition-related questions?
4. Is your staff trained to address these questions?
(For ConAgra Corporate)5. Is ConAgra considering a uniform labeling policy that will cover all brands?
To post a response, please go to [url="http://www.peanutallergy.com/bbpage.htm"]http://www.peanutallergy.com/bbpage.htm[/url] and register; then post your response under our Take Action forum. We have already received responses from Procter & Gamble and Kellogg USA, and have found the information very helpful.
Thank you in advance for your assistance.
Yours truly,
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ConAgra, Kid Cuisine and Banquet - [url="http://www.ConAgra.com"]www.ConAgra.com[/url] *
* Note: the ConAgra site always asks if you wish to download Flash for the animation on their web site. Just disregard this (click "NO") or press "Skip Intro" in the upper left corner of the ConAgra site.
Swiss Miss

Just bringing important topics up!
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Karalot

How frustrating, I also just recently found out they are a parent company for several grocery stores around my area. I found this out by going to a job fair and the store was hiring and they had all this info about conagra so I started asking questions only to be directed to call Conagra which of course won't answer questions.

After 3 general inquiries to ConAgra without a straight answer about cross-contamination, I got an idea. I sent an individual e-mail asking about an individual company they own for each of 34 out of the 66 companies they listed on their website. So far, the response is that:
BANQUET, COUNTRY SKILLET, GILARDI FOODS, HEALTHY CHOICE, KID CUISINE, and MARIE CALLENDER'S products risk cross-contamination by peanut &/or other nuts, but are not labelled to that effect.
COOK FAMILY FOODS & HEBREW NATIONAL KOSHER FOODS are safe.
I will keep you posted when I hear more.

Heard from 2 more sub-deparments: JIFFY POP & ACT II are safe. BLUE BONNET, EGG BEATERS, FLEISCHMANN'S, MOVE OVER BUTTER, PARKAY, & REDDI-WIP are safe.

ConAgra update:
LA CHOY, CHUN KING, HUNT'S, WESSON, SWISS MISS, CAMPFIRE, BUTTERBALL BROTH, & PAM are unsafe.
ORVILLE REDDENBACHER MICROWAVE POPCORN ONLY (no other reddenbacher products), & CHEF BOYARDEE CANNED PRODUCTS are safe.
The more I learn, the angrier I get. This company does not record reported reactions, refuses to use dedicated lines or warning labels, & is continually expanding. They manufacture over 2000 products & growing. Enough talk. What can we do to organize & take action?

OK sillyfeline - you've done all the legwork for us. Let's get organized over in the Take Action Forum. There is a ConAgra thread "Going Nuts" started in the Take Action Forum to enable us to get contact information for an e-mail campaign directed toward ConAgra.
That action was held up due to the Nestle Canada situation, but the original date for the ConAgra e-mail campaign was April 30th.
Do you recall the Kellogg's E-mail campaign that we did? ConAgra will be done the same way - posting as much contact information as possible (I've even found a way to make the ConAgra e-mail address clickable right from this site to enable people to send e-mail straight from here). Someone can come up with a sample letter to ConAgra that we can copy and paste into the e-mail, if they don't have time to compose a letter on their own. This way, ConAgra gets bombarded with a flood of e-mails, since it's easy to copy and paste and letter and press send!
Amy (Going Nuts) has the phone #'s and snail-mail address of ConAgra, but perhaps you can narrow down which specific divisions need to be targeted. Will we leave out the "safe" ones and only e-mail the unsafe or questionable divisions? Or do we want to target ConAgra as a whole?
I'll bump the ConAgra thread up in the Take Action Forum so we can sort stuff out and get moving on this.
Thanks so much for all your work on this issue - you've certainly made our work a lot easier. We seem to have lots of support on this issue, and one of our members also suggested approaching other food allergy web sites to ask if they would like to be involved with our campaign. That way, they are not always hearing from just the peanut-allergic people, but other food-allergic people as well. Perhaps this will have even more of an impact.
Lots of work to be done. Let's get organized! See you in the Take Action Forum.

Bringing this to the top!