After over 60 days in quarantine, all 50 states have officially lifted stay-at-home orders. That’s right, our time cooped up indoors has finally come to an end. But as we begin to prepare to return to our normal, pre-corona, everyday lives, there’s a couple of things to take into account. And that’s what we’ve addressed this past week. As we get ready to dive headfirst into normal life, it’s time to restock and plan for the post-covid future that we’re facing. And in that process, it’s important to consider where your products are coming from, and the conditions they’re being manufactured in. We all want to take extra precautions to stay healthy when we leave the house, so what can you do to provide your customers with food-safe, contaminant-free, and high-quality products?
First and foremost: choose an American-made product, and specify that to your customers! America is ranked 4th on the Global Food Security Index for safety and quality of the products they produce. China on the other hand ranks 38th, and India even lower at 84th. Clearly, products made in the USA are of a much higher quality than those made overseas, and are more likely to come from a food-safe facility. The manufacturing industry in China and India–while having improved food-safety and cleanliness standards in the past 10 years–is so large and widespread that it is nearly impossible to enforce strong regulations. So even though there has been new legislation tightening the reins on the food and food packaging industries overseas, they are not nearly as well enforced as they are stateside.
Second: choose a product that is being manufactured in a Safe Quality Food (SQF) certified facility. As the coronavirus pandemic slowly comes to an end here in the US, food-safe and contaminant-free products are more important now than ever. Restaurants are even using wrapped, single-use cutlery in place of reusable metal cutlery to help keep customers safe as they slowly begin to reopen. But is wrapped cutlery really more sterile? Do you know where it came from, how it was manufactured, what standards it had to pass? An SQF certified facility guarantees products not only of the highest quality, but that are food-safe and contaminant-free. And in a post-covid world, that’s the most important thing you can provide for your customers: peace of mind and confidence in the products they use.
We’ve made it through one of the most tumultuous times in recent history. And we’ve learned so much because of it. Some of us want life to go back to exactly the way it was before corona, some think the world has been changed forever, and some fall in the middle of the spectrum. Reality is, we cannot stay cooped up in our homes forever, and we need the country to start getting back to some semblance of normal. Disposable products are an intricate part of that process. Take-out is still necessary, masks are still needed, and we need ways to protect consumers as they venture back out into the world. Disposables provide that. But where your disposables come from and how they’re made matters. So choose American-made to support the American workforce and guarantee the best quality. And choose SQF-certified to ensure food-safety and contaminant-free. And as a bonus? Choose compostable. As the single-use disposables industry surges, don’t let it be at the cost of the health of our planet. This is our chance to make a change for a planet and our country. Let’s take it.
