Robert Watson, a top ingredient buyer for Kraft Foods, needed $20,000 to pay his taxes. So he called a broker for a California tomato processor that for years had been paying him bribes to get its products into Kraft’s plants. The check would soon be in the mail, the broker promised. “We’ll have to deduct it out of your commissions as we move forward,” he said, using a euphemism for bribes. Days later, federal agents descended on Kraft’s offices and confronted Mr Watson. He admitted his role in a bribery scheme that has laid bare a vein of corruption in the food industry. The scheme also involved millions of pounds of tomato products with high levels of mold or other defects, raising serious questions about how well food manufacturers safeguard the quality of their ingredients.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/business/25tomatoes.html
