Thinly sliced: Olive Garden’s parent company sues nearly 30 chicken processors over alleged price-fixing

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If I recall correctly …. We’re keeping our eyes on two salmonella-related voluntary recalls announced over the last week: One, from Satur Farms, involves a possible salmonella contamination in baby spinach and mesclun greens that prompted Whole Foods to take prepared foods off its shelves in eight states. The other recall, involving General Mills’ Gold Medal Unbleached Flour, includes flour in five-pound bags with a “best by” date of April 20, 2020. There have been no confirmed illnesses associated with either recall.

Untrustworthy. Darden restaurant group, whose brands include Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse, is suing nearly 30 chicken processors over what alleged antitrust violations, Meatingplace reports (registration required). As we’ve reported ad nauseum, this isn’t Big Chicken’s first tussle with such allegations. Only recently, however, has the hospitality industry taken poultry producers to task. Last week, restaurant chain Hooters also accused the poultry industry of violating antitrust law. Meanwhile, in protein of the sea news, FoodDive reports that canned-tuna giant StarKist will pay Walmart $20 million to resolve the retail corporation’s price-fixing claims against the company.

Better than soyrizo. An ostrich farm, along with seven other food startups, will be mentored in a bootcamp by Chipotle executives as part of a seven-month accelerator program, Food Business News reports. American Ostrich Farms, which is based in Idaho, brags that ostriches taste “like a filet mignon, but better,” and release fewer greenhouse gases than cattle. No word on when, if ever, we’ll see the other other white meat in our burrito bowls.

If you give an American a Girl Scout cookie … they’ll be thrilled. Whether you pay $3 or $5 a box for these seasonal favorites, the 200 million cookies sold each year should tell us one thing: Americans have a big appetite for Girl Scout variety. What’s the secret to this $800 million business, which has provided a formative entrepreneurial experience for generations of American women? Vox has the story.

It’s like some corn bad stuff, right? Remember that Jimmy Kimmel bit where people who say they’re against GMOs can’t actually explain what they are? It turns out that those same people probably know even less about basic science than those who are agnostic about GMOs. Harvest Public Media reports that the more strongly respondents in a new university study opposed GMOs, the less likely they were to know whether the core of the earth is hot or cold, or if an ordinary tomato has genes.