Summit Notebook

All I want for Christmas is a blockbuster

What’s a great holiday gift in a recession, yes a good old fashioned book. Random House just got its new Dan Brown bestseller on the shelves.

Pearson’s Chief Financial Officer admitted that its consumer publisher Penguin does not have a blockbuster for the holiday season but — in a rare glimpse of corporate honesty — said it sure would like to have one.

“ I think we’ve got some good books for Christmas,” Pearson’s Robin Freestone said at the Reuters Media Summit on the upcoming holiday shopping season.

“We haven’t got a blockbuster in the sort of Dan Brown mode or the Stephanie Meyer mode. We sort of pretend we don’t really want a blockbuster but that isn’t true at all.”

“We’d love to have a blockbuster… but we have some suprises,” he said.

“The MI5 history, which is a whopping great thick book, is selling extremely well. “

from Shop Talk:

Food safety worries? Join the club

Are you worried about the rash of high-profile and often deadly tainted-food scandals involving everything from peanut butter and chili peppers to spinach and baby formula?

You are not alone.

"When I heard peanut products were being contaminated earlier this year, I immediately thought of my 7-year-old daughter, Sasha, who has peanut butter sandwiches for lunch probably three times a week," U.S. President Barack Obama said recently, referring to a salmonella outbreak that has made 683 people in 46 states sick, killed as many as nine and forced the recall of more than 3,000 products. 

"No parent should have to worry that their child is going to get sick from their lunch," said Obama, who is leading a charge to improve the U.S. food safety system. 

Parties ranging from the CEO of cereal maker Kellogg to Rosa DeLauro, chairwoman of a House of Representatives Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the FDA, have joined the call for stricter oversight.

China will enact a new food-safety law on June 1aimed at preventing another massive health threat like last year's melamine-tainted milk formula that killed at least six toddlers and made almost 300,000 sick.

But in a chilling reminder of the troubles in an increasingly global food chain, China's Ministry of Health said in a document: "At present, China's food-security situation remains grim with high risks and contradictions."

from Shop Talk:

Let them eat steak

Tired of paying high prices for everything from soup to cereal? See your butcher.

While food makers like Kellogg and Campbell Soup have yet to take back price hikes on boxes of cereal and cans of soup spurred by last year's spike in commodity costs, beef companies have to move their premium, perishable product in a environment where restaurants aren't buying and consumers are pinching pennies. 

"You are seeing some of the best value in grocery stores for steaks than what you have seen in an awfully long time," Gregg Doud, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association's chief economist said at the Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit in Chicago.

"You are seeing a lot of features for rib-eyes and T-bones at below $5 a pound. That is some of the best featuring we have seen in many many years," Doud said.

In April 2008, the retail price for boneless rib-eye steaks averaged $9.49 per pound and T-bones averaged $6.88 a pound, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

(Photo\Reuters)