Help us Find the Super-Private Brands – The TFT Reader Investigation Continues

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So far we’ve had a couple of major breakthroughs as part of the TFT Reader Investigation–first, we’ve discovered the brand-name manufacturers of dozens of private-label products (we’ll continue to update our chart, leaving readers with a handy guide once the investigation ends), and second we’ve uncovered what could be a pretty shady connection between organic dairies and organic beef.

We’ll be bringing you more info on the latter later this week, but first, we need your help in another area, what we’re calling the super-private label foods–the stuff made by folks who only do private label products. So far we’ve uncovered two: Aurora Organic Dairy, which supplies store-brand organic milk for Target, Wal-Mart and Safeway, and the Inter-American Products Company, which we know makes Kroger’s private-label foods (and is owned by Kroger), but we hear also supplies a number of other stores.

Here’s what we need your help with:

1. Who are these manufacturers’ customers? We want to get a better picture of how many stores these companies are supplying.

2. What are the other super-private label manufacturers out there? Where are they? We want to find out as much as possible about these operations.

The linked websites above are a good place to start, as are the labels on some store-brand foods. Not all labels include the manufacturers’ information, but a good many do. Another good place to look? In the parking lots of grocery stores and big box stores, where shipping boxes might be getting thrown out.

I’ll be looking in all of these places as well, but the more people we can get involved, the better information we’re likely to get. And remember, the goal is not to bring down the store brands, but to educate ourselves so that we know which products are a good value and which are just poor quality–or worse, unsafe.

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