At a Feb. 20, 2013 meeting, members of the Board of Directors of Unified Grocers, the largest wholesale grocery distributor in the Western United States, named Bob Ling President and Chief Executive Officer, effective May 1, 2013. Ling, who has been President of Unified since June, 2011, succeeds Al Plamann, who announced his retirement earlier at the Company’s Annual Shareholders’ Meeting.

“Bob Ling is an outstanding administrator and a thoughtful and creative leader,” said Dick Goodspeed, Chairman of the Board, Unified Grocers. “Having spent 16 years as a top executive at our company, he understands our business, he knows our retail members and customers, he has built strong relationships with the vendor community and he works well with our associates. We believe that Bob Ling is an excellent choice to lead our company at this point in time.”

“I have all the confidence in the world that Bob Ling will be an effective and dynamic leader for Unified,” said Al Plamann, Chief Executive Officer, Unified Grocers. “The succession plan that the Board and Senior Management put in place more than a year ago is now setting the stage for future growth. I believe the future for Unified is in very good hands.”

Prior to being named President, Ling served as Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, a position in which he was responsible for the Company’s Human Resources, Labor Relations, Real Estate and Government Relations functions.

Before he joined Unified in 1996, Ling held senior level positions with retail drugstore and supermarket companies. He was Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary for MegaFoods Stores, Inc., in Mesa, Arizona and also served as Acting President and CEO of MegaFoods. Ling also had a similar position with Reliable Drug Stores, Inc., in Indianapolis, Indiana. Earlier in his career, he was a partner in the law firm of Michael Best & Friedrich in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, concentrating his practice in employment and labor law.

Ling currently serves on the Board of Directors of the National Grocers Association and was Chairman of the Board of the California Grocers Association (CGA) in 2009 and recently served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the CGA Educational Foundation for four years. Previously, he served on CGA’s Executive Committee, was a member of the Government Relations Committee and the Association’s Political Advisory Committee.

He is a Board Member and Public Affairs Committee Member of the California Retailers Association. He also is a member of the California Business Roundtable and the Government Relations Committee of the Food Marketing Institute.

A graduate of Tufts University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics, Ling holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Michigan Law School. He is a member of the State Bar of California and the State Bar of Wisconsin.

Unified Shareholders Elect Board of Directors, Goodspeed Elected Chairman of the Board

Shareholders of Unified Grocers, the largest wholesale grocery distributor in the Western United States, elected 16 individuals to the Board of Directors at the Company’s Annual Shareholders Meeting, held Feb. 20, 2013 in Cerritos, Calif.

At a Board of Directors meeting immediately following the Annual Shareholders Meeting, directors re-elected Richard E. Goodspeed, Principal, Goodspeed & Associates, as Chairman of the Board of Unified Grocers. Goodspeed has served as Chairman of Unified’s Board since 2010. Directors also re-elected Louis A. Amen, Chairman of the Board, Super A Foods, Inc., Los Angeles, Calif., as First Vice Chairman and elected Jay T. McCormack, President and Chief Executive Officer, Rio Ranch Markets, Riverside, Calif., as Second Vice Chairman.

In addition to Goodspeed, Amen and McCormack, 13 other individuals were elected by shareholders to serve on Unified’s Board of Directors:

• John Berberian, President, Berberian Enterprises, Inc., Los Angeles, Calif.
• Oscar Gonzalez, Co-owner, Northgate Gonzalez Markets, Inc., Anaheim, Calif.
• Paul Kapioski, President, CAP Food Services Co., Seattle, Wash.
• Darioush Khaledi, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, K.V. Mart Co., Carson, Calif.
• Mark H. Kidd, President, Mar-Val Food Stores, Inc., Lodi, Calif.
• John D. Lang, President and Chief Executive Officer, Epson America, Inc., Long Beach, Calif.
• John Najjar, President, Cardiff Seaside Market, Inc., Cardiff, Calif.
• Thomas S. Sayles, Senior Vice President, University Relations, University of Southern California., Los Angeles, Calif.
• Mimi R. Song, President and Chief Executive Officer, Super Center Concepts, Inc., Santa Fe Springs, Calif.
• Robert E. Stiles, Special Advisor to the CEO, Gelson’s Markets, Encino, Calif.
• Michael S. Trask, President, Stanlar Foods, Inc., Granite Falls, Wash.
• Kenneth R. Tucker, President, Evergreen Markets, Inc., Greenville, Calif.
• Richard L. Wright, Chairman of the Board, Market of Choice, Inc., Eugene, Ore.

All directors on Unified’s Board were elected to one-year terms.

Sixty cities including Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Pasadena already have acted to ban single-use plastic bags at store checkout lines, and now a lawmaker says it is time for the rest of the state to follow suit.

State Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima) has introduced legislation that would prohibit large retail stores throughout California from providing single-use carryout bags to customers starting in 2015. Starting in July 2016, the ban would extend to convenience food stores, food marts and other smaller businesses under SB 405.

Stores would be able to sell recycled paper bags, compostable bags or reusable bags to customers. In Los Angeles paper bags are available for 10 cents each.

The idea of having a state law on the subject was welcomed by Ron Fong, president and chief executive of the California Grocers Assn., who stopped short of endorsing the specific bill.

“Our industry supports efforts to achieve a statewide solution to single-use carryout bag regulation in California,” Fong said. “With a patchwork of more than 60 local ordinances, compliance becomes a challenge for grocery retailers, and consumers become confused about their options at the check stand.”

Reprinted from The Los Angeles Times (2/22/2013)

Al Plamann, chief executive officer, Unified Grocers, announced he will retire from the company, effective May 1, 2013. Plamann made his announcement at the Company’s Annual Shareholders’ Meeting at the Sheraton Cerritos Hotel.

“Through Al Plamann’s leadership, Unified Grocers has more than doubled in size and has evolved into one of the premier companies in today’s grocery industry,” said Richard Goodspeed, Chairman of the Board, Unified Grocers. “We appreciate Al’s commitment to Unified’s growth and success, and we wish him well in his retirement.”

Plamann has served as Chief Executive Officer of the Company since September 1999 when Los Angeles-based Certified Grocers of California, Ltd. merged with United Grocers, Inc. of Portland, Oregon. Prior to the merger, Plamann served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Certified Grocers of California for six years and also spent four years as Senior Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer. Before joining Certified in 1989, he had a distinguished 13-year career with Atlantic-Richfield Company (ARCO) in Los Angeles.

“With Bob Ling’s nearly two years of experience as President of the company, an energetic management team in place, a loyal and dedicated group of associates and a strong base of independent retailers, I feel that this is an ideal time for me to step back and let this dynamic group take the Company to new levels of prosperity,” Plamann said. “I am confident that Unified Grocers is well-positioned for success in the years to come.”

During Plamann’s tenure as CEO, Unified has grown from a Company with $1.8 billion in annual sales to nearly $4 billion. Additionally, the Company has expanded its customer base to an area that stretches from Mexico to Alaska, as well as to key international points around the globe.

“Al Plamann has been a driving force at Unified for decades, helping our Company to achieve unprecedented levels of success,” said Bob Ling, president, Unified Grocers. “He has a well-earned reputation as a creative thinker and strategist and his legacy for these achievements and other contributions will endure in our industry for many years to come.”

Plamann currently serves as the Vice Chairman of the Twelfth District Economic Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve, as well as the Board of the Food Marketing Institute and the National Cooperative Grocers Association. In February of 2004, he was inducted into the CGA Hall of Achievement. He is a Board member of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the Town Hall of Los Angeles, a Board of Visitors member of the George L. Graziadio School of Business & Management — Pepperdine University and a member of the Southern California Chapter of the National Association of Corporate Directors and Weingart Center Association, a non-profit organization that provides assistance to the homeless in Los Angeles.

With Washington State on the verge of a ballot initiative that would require labeling of some foods containing genetically engineered ingredients and other states considering similar measures, some of the major food companies and Wal-Mart, the country’s largest grocery store operator, have been discussing lobbying for a national labeling program.

Chris McManus, with boxes of petitions for his initiative to require the labeling of gene-engineered food sold in Washington State.

Executives from PepsiCo, ConAgra and about 20 other major food companies, as well as Wal-Mart and advocacy groups that favor labeling, attended a meeting in January in Washington convened by the Meridian Institute, which organizes discussions of major issues. The inclusion of Wal-Mart has buoyed hopes among labeling advocates that the big food companies will shift away from tactics like those used to defeat Proposition 37 in California last fall, when corporations spent more than $40 million to oppose the labeling of genetically modified foods.

“They spent an awful lot of money in California — talk about a lack of return on investment,” said Gary Hirshberg, co-chairman of the Just Label It campaign, which advocates national labeling, and chairman of Stonyfield, an organic dairy company.

Instead of quelling the demand for labeling, the defeat of the California measure has spawned a ballot initiative in Washington State and legislative proposals in Connecticut, Vermont, New Mexico and Missouri, and a swelling consumer boycott of some organic or “natural” brands owned by major food companies.

Mr. Hirshberg, who attended the January meeting, said he knew of roughly 20 states considering labeling requirements.

“The big food companies found themselves in an uncomfortable position after Prop. 37, and they’re talking among themselves about alternatives to merely replaying that fight over and over again,” said Charles Benbrook, a research professor at Washington State University who attended the meeting.

“They spent a lot of money, got a lot of bad press that propelled the issue into the national debate and alienated some of their customer base, as well as raising issues with some trading partners,” said Mr. Benbrook, who does work on sustainable agriculture.

For more than a decade, almost all processed foods in the United States — like cereals, snacks and salad dressings — have contained ingredients from plants with DNA that has been manipulated in a laboratory. The Food and Drug Administration, other regulators and many scientists say these foods pose no danger. But as Americans ask more pointed questions about what they are eating, popular suspicions about the health and environmental effects of biotechnology are fueling a movement to require that food from genetically modified crops be labeled, if not eliminated.

Impending F.D.A. approval of a genetically modified salmon and the Agriculture Department’s consideration of genetically engineered apples have further intensified the debate.

“We’re at a point where, this summer, families could be sitting at their tables and wondering whether the salmon and sweet corn they’re about to eat has been genetically modified,” said Trudy Bialic, director of public affairs at PCC Natural Markets in Seattle. “The fish has really accelerated concerns.”

Mr. Hirshberg said some company representatives wanted to find ways to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to proceed with federal labeling.

“The F.D.A. is not only employing 20-year-old, and we think obsolete, standards for materiality, but there is a general tendency on the part of the F.D.A. to be resistant to change,” he said. “With an issue as polarized and politicized as this one, it’s going to take a broad-based coalition to crack through that barrier.”

Morgan Liscinsky, an F.D.A. spokeswoman, said the agency considered the “totality of all the data and relevant information” when forming policy guidance. “We’ve continued to evaluate data as it has become available over the last 20 years,” she said.

Neither Mr. Hirshberg nor Mr. Benbrook would identify other companies that participated in the talks, but others confirmed some of the companies represented. Caroline Starke, who represents the Meridian Institute, said she could not comment on a specific meeting or participants.

Proponents of labeling in Washington State have taken a somewhat different tack from those in California, arguing that the failure to label will hurt the state’s fisheries and apple and wheat farms. “It’s a bigger issue than just the right to know,” Ms. Bialic said. “It reaches deep into our state’s economy because of the impact this is going to have on international trade.”

A third of the apples grown in Washington State are exported, many of them to markets for high-value products around the Pacific Rim, where many countries require labeling. Apple, fish and wheat farmers in Washington State worry that those countries and others among the 62 nations that require some labeling of genetically modified foods will be much more wary of whole foods than of processed goods.

The Washington measure would not apply to meat or dairy products from animals fed genetically engineered feed, and it sharply limits the ability to collect damages for mislabeling.

Mr. Benbrook and consumer advocates say the federal agencies responsible for things like labeling have relied on research financed by companies that make genetically modified seeds.

“If there is a documented issue with this overseas, it could have a devastating impact on the U.S. food system and agriculture,” Mr. Benbrook said. “The F.D.A. isn’t going to get very far with international governments by saying Monsanto and Syngenta told us these foods are safe and we believed them.”

Advocacy groups also have denounced the appointment of Michael R. Taylor, a former executive at Monsanto, as the F.D.A.’s deputy commissioner for food and veterinary medicine.

Ms. Liscinsky of the F.D.A. said Mr. Taylor was recused from issues involving biotechnology.

What has excited proponents of labeling most is Wal-Mart’s participation in the meeting. The retailer came under fire from consumer advocates last summer for its decision to sell a variety of genetically engineered sweet corn created by Monsanto.

Because Wal-Mart is the largest grocery retailer, a move by the company to require suppliers to label products could be influential in developing a national labeling program.

“I can remember when the British retail federation got behind labeling there, that was when things really started to happen there,” said Ronnie Cummins, founder and national director of the Organic Consumers Association. “If Wal-Mart is at the table, that’s a big deal.”

Brands like Honest Tea, which is owned by Coca-Cola, have written to the association, which estimates 75 percent of grocery products contain a genetically modified ingredient, to protest its “Traitors Boycott,” which urges consumers not to buy products made by units of companies that fought Proposition 37. Consumers have peppered the companies’ Web sites, Facebook pages and Twitter streams with angry remarks.

Ben & Jerry’s, the ice cream company, announced recently that it would remove all genetically modified ingredients from its products by the end of this year. Consumers had expressed outrage over the money its parent, Unilever, contributed to defeat the California measure.

The state Legislature in Vermont, where Ben & Jerry’s is based, is considering a law that would require labeling, as is the General Assembly in Connecticut. Legislators in New Mexico have proposed an amendment to the state’s food law that would require companies to label genetically modified products.

And this month, a senator in Missouri, home of Monsanto, one of the biggest producers of genetically modified seeds, proposed legislation that would require the labeling of genetically engineered meat and fish.

“I don’t want to hinder any producer of genetically modified goods,” the senator, Jamilah Nasheed, who represents St. Louis, said in a news release. “However, I strongly feel that people have the right to know what they are putting into their bodies.”

Reprinted from The New York Times (1/31/2013)