Sunday Roundup Memo: A Weekend Roundup of News, Features and Information for Your Weekend Reading

Ethical Foods Memo: The United Kingdom's Times Online is reporting today the animal rights group Peta is trading in its campaign against celebrities who wear fur and going after the whole animal so to speak, as well as now being able to target both genders equally--or at least those male celebrities who don't normally wear fur who might have been left out in the earlier campaign.

Peta is beginning to target high-profile celebrities in the U.S. and UK who eat meat, going after them for their meat-eating ways in a manner similar to how the animal rights advocacy group has conducted its anti fur-wearing campaign for the last few years. One of the first celebrities in Peta's sights is the singer and sometime actress Jessica Simpson. Read the piece, "Animal rights group turns its fire on celebrity meat-eaters," from today's Times Online here.

Retail Memo: Speaking of United Kingdom-United States' connection, including animal welfare issues, Tesco PLC, the UK's largest retailer and the third-largest retail company in the world, held its 2008 Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Friday afternoon in the UK. Tesco owns the fast-growing Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market small-format food and grocery chain which currently has 61 stores in California, Arizona and Nevada, in the U.S. and will open 30 more stores in the next 90 days in these same states.

The AGM on Friday featured a vocal cast of Tesco critics, numerous activist groups, and even lots of shareholders. Among those activist groups were a coalition of animal welfare groups lead by popular British celebrity chef and animal welfare activist Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who hosts a popular TV cooking program in the UK from his River Cottage farm. The chef and activist launched a shareholder resolution at this year's annual meeting, which if it had passed (it didn't) would have changed Tesco's chicken selling policy, limiting the number of small or battery cage-raised chickens it could sell, in favor of forcing the retailer to sell more free-range birds in its UK stores.

Numerous other activist groups attended the annual meeting on Friday. These included: a group protesting what it says is Tesco's practice of paying at one of its clothing factories in India sub-minimum wages; a group protesting Tesco's treatment of live turtles in its stores in China; the U.S. United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), which has launched a campaign in both the U.S. and the UK designed to get Tesco executives to meet with union leaders about unionizing the retailer's Fresh & Easy grocery stores in the U.S.; and others.

The blog Fresh & Easy Buzz, which covers Tesco and its Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market chain in the U.S. in-depth, has a piece today about the Tesco annual meeting on Friday. The piece includes numerous links to stories published about the AGM in a variety of UK publications as well. Read the Fresh & Easy Buzz piece here.

Prepared Foods Memo: Florida's Palm Beach Post has a story today that suggests despite the soaring cost of food in the U.S., supermarkets and natural foods stores are still seeing strong sales in the fresh, prepared foods category. Retailers and others quoted in the piece attribute this to consumers eating out at restaurants far less than they were just a year ago and spending their prepared foods' dollars at supermarkets instead. As a result, although many consumers are cutting back on the overall quantity of prepared foods they purchase, supermarket sales are benefiting from a shift in those purchases from restaurants to in-store prepared foods departments.

Food retailers also are aiding category sales by offering more value-oriented prepared foods items and holding the line on prices for the ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat items. Read the story from Today's Palm Beach Post here.

Specialty Foods Memo: The Superbowl of specialty and gourmet food shows (with lots of natural and organic products included), the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade's (NASFT) annual Summer Fancy Food Show, starts today at the Javits Convention center in New York City. Despite the global economic slowdown, which has hit specialty foods producers and marketers fairly hard with soaring fuel costs and high food inflation, NASFT says this year's summer show will be its biggest ever. The show runs through Tuesday. To read more about this year's fancy food show go to http://www.specialtyfood.com/. Also learn more at: http://www.specialtyfoodnews.com/.

Slow Foods Memo: The return of the victory garden to be part of Slow Foods Nation's big August 29 -to- September 2 conference and food festival in San Francisco, California.

Starting July 1, Slow Food Nation will herald the end of urban food deserts with the creation of an ornamental edible garden in the heart of San Francisco’s Civic Center. The garden will be part of Slow Food Nation's transformation of the Civic Center into a Slow Food Marketplace during the event. The artist's rendering above depicts what the Civic Center Slow Food Marketplace will look like.

Created in collaboration with Victory Gardens 2008+, the Victory Garden project takes its name from 20th Century wartime efforts to address food shortages by encouraging citizens to plant gardens on public and private land. In the early 1940s, gardens sprouted in front yards and vacant lots throughout the United States, and produced 40 percent of the nation’s vegetables.

San Francisco’s victory garden program became one of the best in the country; Golden Gate Park alone had 250 garden plots.

The Slow Food Nation Victory Garden will demonstrate the potential of truly local agriculture, bring together and promote Bay Area gardening organizations and produce high-quality food for those in need.

On Saturday, July 12, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Slow Food Nation founder, Alice Waters, will introduce the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden at San Francisco’s Civic Center. Over 100 volunteers and 10 garden leaders will join us to plant the garden. If you are interested in volunteering, please email: victorygarden@slowfoodnation.org

For more information about Slow Food Nation: http://www.slowfoodnation.org/.

Food & Society Memo: From http://www.tulsaworld.com/, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Eco-friendly fashion statement: You could fill a shopping bag with groceries for a decent night's meal or tomorrow's lunch. But this particular bag can feed many more than just you and your family. Whole Foods Market and FEED Projects, a socially minded business with hopes of feeding the world, recently introduced the FEED 100 reusable shopping bag. Made from organic cotton, each bag will help provide 100 nutritious meals to hungry school-age children in Rwanda through the United Nations World Food Program's School Feeding Program. It's a lightweight, fresh-white tote that collapses easily into its base, which is a zippered rectangular burlap pouch emblazoned with the FEED logo and the number 100.

When a Whole Foods Market customer buys a bag (a mere $29.99), $10 will be donated to the Rwanda feeding operation. The remainder covers the cost of the bag and oversight of the program by the FEED foundation.

FEED Projects, which previously launched the original FEED 1 bag, was founded by Lauren Bush, a former fashion model, as well as Ellen Gustafson, a former World Food Program communications officer.

[Natural~Specialty Foods Memo note: Lauren Bush happens to be the niece of George W. Bush, President of the United States. However, since President Bush's approval rating in the U.S. is below 30% (and worse globally), please don't hold that against her if you happen to be among the 70-plupercent of those who disaprove of the job he is doing as President. It's good work on Ms. Bush's (Lauren's) part.]

Natural-Specialty Foods Industry Website Memo: We suggest you take a look at the design and content improvements editor-in-chief Dan Bolton and his team are doing over at http://www.naturalfoodnet.com/. (Natural Food Network.)

The natural foods industry business network and portal is adding additional features, along with refining its look and design. Additionally, more new features are on the way, says editor-in-chef Bolton.

One feature of naturalfoodnet.com is the ability for users to create custom news feeds as a way to keep informed about industry and related news and information. Natural~Specialty Foods Memo is included among those RSS feeds on the website, so you can now include us among your custom publication choices.

If you haven't visited http://www.naturalfoodsnet.com/ before, when you get to the homepage just click on the MyNaturalFoodNet link at the top (you will see a menu). Once there, you can register for the website. Once registered, it shows you how to create your own custom dashboard, which allows you to create your own RSS feed publication list, including Natural~Specialty Foods Memo (NSFM) of course.

NSFM also is linked with an RSS Feed on the homepage.

There's a link to the Natural Foods Network online magazine, along with other features of the site, on the homepage as well.

http://www.naturalfoodsnet.com/.

Happy Father's Day, 2008

In memory of the life and career of Timothy J. Russert, an American original

American Journalist, father, son, husband, author and friend to many, Tim Russert, passed away on Friday, June 13, after having a massive heart attack while at work in his office at the NBC News Center in New York City.

Tim Russert was the author of two best selling books about fathers and sons and fathers and daughters. His first book, "Big Russ and Me: Father and Son--Lessons of Life," is the story of Mr. Russert and his father, "Big Russ," and the lessons he learned from his dad.

Tim Russert's second book, "Wisdom of our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons," which he wrote as the result of the tens of thousands of letters he received from sons and daughters who read his book about "Big Russ," is full of stories from American sons and daughters about their fathers.

These two books introduced Tim Russert to millions of Americans (and people from many countries internationally as the books were published outside the U.S.) who only knew him as the journalist who hosted the Sunday morning news interview program Meet the Press or appeared on NBC election night return broadcasts and in other broadcast news venues.

Meet the Press is the longest running television program of any kind in the U.S. Mr. Russert was its longest running host, until his sudden death on Friday.

Russert was an "everyman" as a person and journalist, even though he obtained fame and an annual salary in the millions. He often said--and lived it--that when he was interviewing a U.S President, Secretary of Defense or other powerful political leader, the questions he asked were those he believed his blue collar dad, "Big Russ," and the folks back home in Buffalo, New York would want the answers to. Russert never forgot those Buffalo roots.

Tim Russert, a law school graduate and member of both the New York and Wahington D.C. bars, never practiced law. Instead, after law school he went to work for the famed intellectual and Senator from New York Daniel Patrick Moynihan, where he rose to become the Senator's chief of staff. It's often said of Moynihan, who was a professor of Social Science before going into politics, that he'd written more books then all the other Senators at the time combined had read.

Later Russert would go to work for New York Governor Mario Cuomo (another intellectual heavy weight), before leaving a successful career in politics for the world of journalism, first as an executive at NBC News, then shortly after that as the network's Washington, D.C. news bureau chief and moderator of Meet the Press.

And it was there where Tim Russert shined. His love of politics was evident in every interview he did, every election night he covered. Russert was an example of how a love of ones work makes it not work at all.

You can read more about the life of Tim Russert here.

Today NBC devoted Meet the Press, Russert's Sunday program, to a remembrance of the journalist, leaving his moderator's chair empty. You can view that remembrance here, along with reading more about Tim Russert. There also are links to Tim Russert's two favorite charities, The Boys and Girls Club of America and Catholic Charities, at this link, as well as a guestbook where if you choose you can write your condolences to Tim Russert's wife Maureen, his dad "Big Russ," who is 89, and his son Luke, who just recently graduated from Boston College, with his proud father in attendance.

Tim Russert always ended Meet the Press each Sunday with this sign off: "If it's Sunday...it's Meet the Press.

For those of us who want to know what America's political leaders are doing in our name and with our tax dollars, Sundays won't be the same without Russert. He gave every high-profile political leader he interviewed each Sunday on the program a fair shake regardless of their respective political party. But he also showed them no prisoners, asking questions and following up in his trademark way. At the end of a Tim Russert interview, one generally learned one of two things: The real scoop, or that the person he was interviewing was not telling the truth.

Tim Russert's death, especially so close to Father's Day, should serve as a remembrance to father's, sons and daughter's alike to grab all you can from and with each other, as life is fickle, and death can come suddenly.

Godspeed.

Cartoon by Gary Varvel, Indystar.com