Rebuilding confidence

More talk about rebuilding confidence, greater traceability and increasing demand for local and organic food is found in this link from Investors.com: From the story:

In the year since three people died and more than 200 were sickened by E. coli after eating contaminated raw spinach, and other reports have surfaced about tainted pet foods, fish and peanut butter, food companies are facing growing pressure to regain trust of consumers, whose confidence in the safety of what they eat is at an 18-year low.

Later....
In response to growing safety concerns, the Food Marketing Institute, a trade association whose board members include chief executives of 81 companies such as grocery giants Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), Kroger Co. (KR) and Safeway Inc. (SWY), formed a task force in October devoted to food safety.
"There's a great interest by both the supplier community and retailers to identify and trace foods," said Jill Hollingsworth, FMI's group vice president of food safety programs. "Retailers want to know more about where foods come from. The old system is just not enough anymore."

Later...

Banana producer Chiquita Brands Inc. (CQB) said this month that North American demand for its Fresh Express salad was still sluggish after an industry E. coli outbreak in spinach last September dampened consumers' confidence in bagged salads.

TK: Is it time for a greater PR/advertising piece from the industry to tell the story of what is being done to protect consumers? Death from a thousand cuts and the stubborn statistics that show a lack of confidence in food safety seem to call for a more aggressive marketing response, from both the industry and individual companies. The question is, does the timing of that response dovetail with on farm progress in food safety practices? The questions relating to improvements in FDA oversight have not been fully resolved, but much has been done at the farm level. Certainly, the leafy greens marketing agreement is one key part of the food safety story that should be told to consumers.