More bad snacks

*We interrupt your holiday festivities to bring you this foodie update*

This has been a rough week for Robert's American Gourmet Inc. Although they have "American" in the company name, Robert's imported the flavoring they use in some of their snacks. Happy Fourth, huh? So in addition to discovering salmonella in the Veggie Booty, it's also in the Super Veggie Tings Crunchy Corn Sticks.

I'm not in the business of manufacturing food, so I don't know the ins and outs of it. But it seems as though it would be a serious risk to import food products from a country that has different quality standards. I imagine that it is a cost-cutting measure, but it seems like the savings are irrelevant if people get sick.

Here's a novel idea: Use a safer, better-quality product and jack up the price 20-30 cents. That's a trade off with which most people can (literally) live. Why not even make that part of your marketing spiel? Everybody knows you get what you pay for...

What gets me is that we keep seeing these stories about tainted products, but no real specifics until they find something or an illness is reported.