Vons Loses Jack in the Box Meat Pact

Jack in the Box dropped Vons Cos. as a meat supplier on Wednesday as part of a continuing series of moves to reassure the public after a wave of illnesses and at least one death linked to contaminated hamburgers sold by the fast-food chain.

Lawsuits have already been filed against the company as children remain hospitalized in Washington state and Las Vegas, the latest area to report food poisoning caused by Jack in the Box hamburgers. San Diego officials have reported similar cases but have not yet connected them to Jack in the Box.

Vons Cos. supplied the hamburger patties that health officials say caused the illnesses. But Washington state health officials have said the meat apparently was contaminated with animal feces before it arrived at Arcadia-based Vons, probably when the cows were slaughtered.

The sale of contaminated Jack in the Box hamburgers has created an undisputed nightmare for the families involved.

But this is also among the toughest problems a corporation can face, experts in crisis public relations say. Companies must struggle to regain public confidence while they fix the problem that destroyed trust in the first place.

The crisis began early last week for Jack in the Box, which is owned by San Diego-based Foodmaker Inc. Washington state health officials said most of about 150 people who developed bloody diarrhea or severe stomach cramps had eaten at Jack in the Box outlets.

“The first thing you have to do is to get to the root of the problem to find out how this could happen, take action to correct it and then publicize what you’re doing,” said Michael Sitrick, who heads Sitrick & Co., a Century City public relations firm.

Jack in the Box and Vons appear to be doing that--after an initial period of finger-pointing. Among other things, Jack in the Box has replaced all the hamburger in its Washington restaurants. The company said it has trained employees to cook the hamburgers longer--a step that probably would have killed the bacteria blamed for the illness, health officials said.

Last Thursday, Jack in the Box President Robert Nugent flew to Seattle and held a news conference. The company has set up an 800 number to answer consumer questions and has been running full-page ads in Seattle area newspapers expressing regret over a 2-year-old boy’s death.

Nugent said Wednesday that the company decided to replace Vons after evaluating its suppliers and procedures.

“Because many of the people who became ill ate at our restaurants, we have taken a number of bold and immediate steps to not only express our deep regret over these events, but to also reassure the public that Jack in the Box restaurants are absolutely safe,” Nugent said.

Vons spokeswoman Mary McAboy said the Jack in the Box contract was not a major revenue producer for the supermarket chain.

Still, Vons stock price fell Wednesday 37.5 cents to close at $24.25 per share on the New York Stock Exchange.

A surprising number of companies, even those that deal regularly with the public, have no plan ready in advance to deal with a crisis, experts say.

“Any cause, any company, any individual is vulnerable to having a crisis and everybody wonders, ‘Can it happen to me?’ ” said Carl Terzian, who heads a Westside public relations firm that bears his name.

The classic example of the best way to handle a crisis is the response by Johnson & Johnson to the Tylenol tampering deaths in 1982.

The oil spill caused when the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground off Alaska in 1989 was followed by what is considered to be a public relations misstep.

In the Tylenol case, Johnson & Johnson reacted immediately by pulling the product, posting a reward and making the company’s chairman visible to explain what the company was doing to fix the problem. New tamper-resistant packaging was developed.

Exxon was perceived as reacting slowly in part because it initially made no public comment and delayed running advertisements or sending its chairman to the scene for several days.