# KFC honey packets



## Barry Digman

After a long hard day we picked up a bucket of chicken with all the side dishes rather than cook a decent meal. The biscuits come with packets of honey. At least it said honey and looked like honey. After tasting it I flipped the packet over and read the ingredients. "Honey" is listed 3rd, after corn syrup and some other nasty stuff. Re-reading the front label I see it's actually "Honey Sauce", with everything but "Honey" printed in a size and color that really is misleading. You'd think the Colonel could stick a packet of the real thing in with the biscuits rather than the slop I got. Here's a link to their customer comment page. Perhaps if they received lots of comments about real honey vs. that junk they're using now some of our members could sell a few extra pounds some day.

http://64.213.197.19/forms/irpt_Comments.asp


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## Michael Bush

It's the same with "honey nut cherrios" etc. There is far more corn syrup than honey. One of those I remember had more salt than honey.


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## Jim Fischer

Worse than that, "Honey-Baked Ham" is baked with,
you guessed it, zero percent honey.

Simple "truth in advertising" regulations ought
to apply here, but states tend to regulate this
sort of thing more than the feds, and states have
no control over products produced elsewhere, and
appear to have little interest in "brand name 
fraud", where Honey is found only in the name.

The punchline?

Well, while my actual Sourwood honey is purchased
every year on the sly by the VA department of 
whatever, and tested to verify that it is actual 
Sourwood honey, and likely raises a few eyebrows 
when they find that it is 100% Sourwood honey, 
rather than the blend of 51% Sourwood and 49% 
Lord-only-knows what honey sold by most packers 
and beekeepers, the "Sourwood Honey Company" 
operated for years, selling honey with the word 
"Sourwood" in very large bold print on all their 
labels, without ever bottling a single ounce of 
actual Sourwood honey (which is prized for its 
flavor).

It took years to shut even them down.
C'est la vie.

jim


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## SilverFox

Isn't a trip my wife and I got a real good laugh when we read a packet at KFC, laughed so loud that people were looking at me, Thought it was just 'cause I'm good looking'  , till my wife "piffed" me upside the head.


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## Dick Allen

"honey sauce" instead of honey when packaged to look like honey is deceptive IMPOV too.


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## Dick Allen

>the "Sourwood Honey Company" operated for years, selling honey with the word "Sourwood" in very large bold print on all their labels, without ever bottling a single ounce of actual Sourwood honey

Unfortunately, many beekeepers aren't as scrupulous as they ought to be either. Here in Alaska, fireweed honey is prized for it's light color and mild flavor. As the old saying goes--much more of it is sold than is actually produced. At the state fair one vendor sells ONLY 'fireweed' honey. Much of her honey is purchased from other beekeepers for resale. I asked her how she knew it was really 'fireweed' honey. She said the beekeepers tell her it is.


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## Dick Allen

Read it carefully. I think it says 'Honey Sauce' and not simply 'honey'. Doesn't it? Still it's deceptive IMPOV


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## Michael Bush

Well, it says something like "HONEY sauce" where honey is very large and sauce is very small.


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## loggermike

Its probably best that these products actually contain very little honey as its mostly imported chinese junk that most would find objectionable if any of it had an actual honey flavor.Anyone think they are using Dakota clover or Cal. sage?Hahaha.I have always taken great pleasure in pointing out the fraud in these products,but no one cares,its a sign of the times we live in.Enron,etc.....


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## Jim Fischer

Its funny - if a company makes a fruit drink,
or fruit jelly, they must either use the real
fruit, or they are forced to use the word
"flavored" to indicate that they have used
artificial flavoring rather than the real fruit.

Why this same set of rules does not apply to
honey is unclear to me, perhaps because we
still lack a formal definition of what honey
is. Cargill came out with a "honey replacement"
called "Likewise" last summer, I assume it to be
some sort of concoction based upon HFCS. 
http://www.cargill.com/news/news_releases/2004/040713_likewise.htm

Clearly, beekeepers need to think carefully about
which brand of HFCS they want to buy for colony
feed in light of this product announcement.

To be perfectly honest, a food chemist may tell
you that using 100% pure honey in a packaged
product that must have a long shelf life like
Honey-Nut Cheerios would complicate things greatly.
That said, sealed individual servings of actual
honey at KFC would be no more trouble to store
and handle than the slop they currently hand out.

The "breakfast buffet" at the decent hotels
(Embassy Suites, larger Hiltons, etc) will
often have little packages of real honey, so
the products are available, and cheap enough
that one can find a basket full of them near
the jellies, coffee creamers, and such.

My view is that products that use the term
"Honey" in the name of the product or as a
prominent feature on the front label should
use honey as the only, or the primary sweetener.
There may be good (chemistry) reasons to need
to add smaller amounts of other sweeteners,
so I don't think that it is reasonable to
demand 100% honey as the sole sweetener in
packaged foods.

Cargill and ADM are rapidly approaching the
"Soylent Green" scenario, so much so that
I expect both to soon have food products
made from ocean algae this decade.


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## Michael Bush

Interesting. They call it "Cargills new Likewise Honey Product". Yet it's a "Honey Product" with no honey in it.


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## Barry Digman

> Clearly, beekeepers need to think carefully about
> which brand of HFCS they want to buy for colony
> feed in light of this product announcement.


Let me make sure I understand this. Cargill manufactures HFCS which is purchased by commercial beekeepers as feed. Cargill also tweaks a similar sweetener and sells (or proposes to sell) as a cheaper alternative to 100% pure US produced honey. Is that correct?


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## SilverFox

The way I read their newsrelease 'Likewise' is supposed to be an affordiable substatute for honey????   . 
But as with all 'substatutes' there will probaly be some after taste or other short comming.
Fans of 'real'honey will probaly stay loyal to honey and the (forgive me) Yuppies and animals right groups will flock to the 'immatation' honey.


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## dcross

Yep.

At AHPA, there was a speaker representing the ABF, who said that one of the large corn growers associations was willing to help pressure Cargill on the matter.


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## Dick Allen

...and tihs isn't the first time for honey substitutes. There was a mild flap a few short years back about 'analog honey' manufactured in India, I think. It was touted as being indistinguisable from real honey.


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## Michael Bush

I figure you can make something that is indistinguishable from the burned metalic tasting crud they sell as honey in the grocery store. But not indistinguishable from the fresh floral tasting, unheated honey that a lot of us have.

They've already gotten Americans to belive that honey tastes like that stuff in the grocery store, it's not that far of a stretch then to make "artificial" honey that taste just as bad.


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## Jim Fischer

> There was a mild flap a few short years back about
> 'analog honey' manufactured in India, I think. It 
> was touted as being indistinguisable from real 
> honey.

It never appeared on the market. I guess it turned
out to be slightly more distinguishable than they
had hoped.


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## Barry Digman

This seems to me to indicate the need for some sort of marketing/educational approach that would bring more awareness to the consumer regarding the purity/labeling/origin of what they're eating. I know the NHB addresses this in some form, but I wonder if the average person on the street is aware of such things as imported honey and honey pretenders. Anyone up-to-date on the NHB's efforts, labeling requirements, etc. regarding honey? With over 2,000 members on this forum alone it would seem feasible to mount a small "awareness campaign" if managed properly.


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## Jim Fischer

> I know the NHB addresses this in some form, but 
> I wonder if the average person on the street is 
> aware of such things as imported honey and honey 
> pretenders.

Of course not - and the NHB itself is to blame!

To be accurate, it is the "enabling legislation"
that is to blame, but the honey board itself could
have requested relief from restrictions that they
claimed prevented them from promoting US Honey
rather than just "Honey" as a generic commodity.
Beekeepers have been asking for this for decades,
so the NHB has certainly not lacked for suggestions.

The problem is that packers and importers dominate
the Honey Board, and US beekeepers are represented
only as an afterthought in this group of buffoons
who shall be among the first put up against the
nearest wall come the revolution.

But what goes around, comes around, and these
same importers and packers who have been flooding
the US market with low-quality honey from places
like China are now faced with a serious competitor.
That's right, kids! China took a while, but figured
out that they could be their own bottler, and
"cut out the middle-man"!

I wondered how long it would take them to buy
a bottling line or two and find someone who
was willing to distribute their product in the US.

The punch line is that they are buying US honey,
mixing it with theirs at a ratio that I'd
estimate to be 1000:1, just so they can claim
that they honey is "a blend of honey from the USA
and China".

Payback is a rabid female dog, isn't it?









Now we may see some real action on the issue of
"country of origin labeling" (COOL) for honey.
Once the big packers realize that they need
to differentiate their product from the Chinese
product, they will realize that their sole
advantage will be to offer "more US honey" in
their blends, or (gasp!) 100% US honey.

Betcha they come up with some sort of weasel
wording like "North American Honey", so they
can pass off Canadian honey as something akin
to US honey.

But who among us is selling the US honey to
China in the first place? Perhaps it is being
sold to some other country, who then sells it
to China, but I suspect that it would not take
too much research to name names, and expose the
worst of the profiteers for what they are.


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## BubbaBob

Take this observation's worth to be, possibly, just what you paid for it, but...

I don't think all the finger-pointing needs to go in the direction of the NHB, Cargill, ADM, etc., ad nauseum. Remember, every time you point a finger at someone you have three fingers pointed back at yourself.

I know many beekeepers do this as a hobby, producing enough honey for personal consumption and as gifts to family/friends. They don't really have a dog in the fight over imports/blends/fake "honey".

For the rest of us, however, we produce to make money in a capitalist system. Remember the first thing that makes decisions in a capitalist system...supply and demand.

The number of beekeepers and hives in the US and Canada has been steadily declining for years, with the attendant drop in honey production, exacerbated by various pest/disease issues. At the same time, demand for honey has been on a steady increase all along. Demand will ALWAYS find a way to be supplied, and in the case of honey, that means imports so long as we don't produce enough to meet demand. We don't even produce enough to meet the demand for people that will pay a high dollar premium for good local honey, much less the corporate buyers that would have to be convinced of the benefit of domestically produced honey. If all of a sudden everyone in this country decided they all, corporate buyer and consumer buyer alike, wanted domestic honey and nothing else, would we fill that demand? Not even close. We all produce all we need to fill the speciality retail market, like craft fairs and local farmers markets, but how many of us do, or try to do, enough production for regional supermarket chains? How many of us have our product in all the local health food stores within 50 miles of our honey house? How many of us are willing to work a route, even if we have enough product, just like the bread man and the milk man, delivering our product to stores, keeping the shelves where our product is neat and filled?

Not many.

Obviously most of us sell all we produce without problem, and don't try to provide that most demanding taskmaster, demand, with all she needs, so she looks elsewhere, i.e. overseas, to have her needs filled.

I have a friend with 100 hives. Last year he averaged 30 lbs of cut-comb per hive. It was a bad year, but that still translates into $270 - $300 per hive at retail prices. Assuming there was no used equipment for sale to be had at pennies on the dollar (there is around here, that's for sure), and assuming no hive was strong enough to split this spring (80 of the 100 are strong enough to split), and assuming buying new, with packages, cost him $175 per new hive (actually more like $150 ea for bottom, three med supers w/frames and foundation, inner/outer lids, and a package of bees), he could increase production by 5% for $825. Did he? No. But he still complains about all the imported stuff. He is one of those with 3 fingers pointed back at himself. Sells all he produces, won't do what it takes to produce more, then says imports are hurting his income. I don't see how.

How many of us willingly spend a few bucks to do simple things like re-queening at least every other year? It costs you a little more that one 2 lb jar of honey, at retail ($8 around here), to re-queen...that's one lb of honey per year to re-queen. I got in this business by buying out a guy a few years back that was complaining that after 7 years of beekeeping with 10 hives, if he wanted a teaspoon of honey he had to go to the local supermarket and buy it. In the 7 years he had been keeping bees he had bought 3....yes 3...queens.

A big honey production killer affects a lot of us...Varroa mites. Those pesky little Apistan resistant mites. How did they get resistant? Mainly because of lazy bee keepers. We are either so cheap we quit with the strips as soon as we see mite counts drop, or are so lazy we leave the strips in far too long. Mites become resistant in both cases...and it is OUR FAULT. The next new miracle cure for hive problems will suffer the same fate as Apistan if we continue to ignore label directions for use. Again, less honey produced to fill demand, more honey imported to do it (fill demand) for us.

Bottom line, before we start complaining about KFC fake honey, ADM, Cargill, etc., let's clean up our side of the street first.

BubbaBob


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## dcross

<<Bottom line, before we start complaining about KFC fake honey, ADM, Cargill, etc., let's clean up our side of the street first.>>

One of the "cold doses of reality" I got in this business was at a talk put on by a local hobbiest. He had, at one point, kept as many as twelve hives. He was now down to one, because there was "too much work" involved. Within thirty seconds of that, he was explaining how anyone charging more than $1.50 a pound for honey, retail, was taking advantage of people.

Meanwhile, Wal-mart was charging $2.50 to $3.


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## Barry Tolson

Interesting to see all this. I was at the discount store the other day and saw "honey" for $1.00 for 8oz. Upon further examination I discovered that it was a blend of corn syrup, honey, and something else. Yet...it was simpley labeled as "honey". I was furious! That has to be a violation of truth in advertising laws or something. Perhaps the states attorney general might have the answer...what do you think?


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## guatebee

Cheating customers is commonplace in Guatemala too. Out of the 6 or so honey brands on local marketes, at least 2 are either adulterated or right down manufactured. Other brands sell honey that does not qualify for export market: too high moisture content, too high non-approved residues.

Over the years, this unlawful practice has been successful in training the layman´s taste to something other than pure, wholesome honey.
The same happens here with dairy products: cream that is manufactured with starch and other substances has fooled people for so long that the true, cow smelling stuff is not so hot selling.

I agree with others´opinions that beekeepers are to blame when it comes to seeing unethical competitors eat out share of the market right in our face.
Government regulations enforcement ought to receive a strong backing from beekeepers, because it is a fact that no supermarket will take the lead in verifying the quality of what they sell. So, if we beekeepers have a strong reason to suspect poor labelling or crappy product, we should make an effort to alert local or national bee groups and defend our right to fair trade practices.

Guatemalan honey goes mainly to European markets, and I can assure you that exporting is no easy task. We are faced with not only strict qulity regulations but also with non-tariff barriers.
Guatemalan honey that finds a way to the European shelves has certainly passed the test.
Still, export prices are not always good. And then, we are confronted with the same issues you are about local consumption.

It seems a successful beekeeper must become a successful business person, and that implies putting up a fight against unethical competition.

Then comes a time too when we hit a dead end in the marketing scheme, and we are forced to look back and review our cost structure and yield.

Commercial guys are more prone to watch costs carefully, because they know wholesale has different rules than retail.

[ January 31, 2005, 10:44 AM: Message edited by: coyote ]


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## Jim Fischer

> ...a blend of corn syrup, honey, and something 
> else. Yet...it was simpley labeled as "honey". 
> ....That has to be a violation of truth in 
> advertising laws or something.

As you are in Indiana, their state law applies.
A cursory search yields Indiana Code 16-42-2-3
http://www.in.gov/legislative/ic/code/title16/ar42/ch2.html
which says, in part:

IC 16-42-2-3
Misbranded foods
A food is considered to be misbranded
under any of the following conditions:
(1) If the food's labeling is false or
misleading in any way.
(2) If the food's labeling or packaging
fails to conform with the rules adopted
under IC 16-42-1-2.
(3) If the food is offered for sale under
the name of another food.
(4) If the food is an imitation of another
food, unless the food's label bears, in type
of uniform size and prominence, the word
"imitation" and, immediately following that
term, the name of the food imitated.

It goes on to list other ways in which these
packages of so-called "honey" are illegal, but
that seems to be the most obvious violation.

It may well be that the product was sold to
the discounter because it had been found to
be in violation of another state's laws.
Nearly every state has similar label laws, so
I doubt that the stuff could really be sold
anywhere with those labels.

If you want, you can report the misleading
labels, and the state will lecture the
(most likely unknowing) store manager, and
perhaps fine the food broker who sold the
stuff for retail sale in Indiana.

Of course, I've run into exactly the same
law in Virginia. My labels have an "ingredients"
list of "Sunshine, flowers, and rain". The
state wanted to take issue with me over that,
until my legal beagles dragged them up and down
the courthouse steps by the legs until they sent
me a letter stating that they had decided to
understand my label to be "a satirical comment
on packaged food products".

Sure, it was expensive, but the press generated
by the legal moves was better advertising than I
could have ever bought for triple the money.
Every aging hippy for several counties in all
directions buys my honey just because we
"stuck it to The Man".

And as we all know, an accurate listing of the
contents of pure honey is exactly as I described.


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## Barry Tolson

Thanks for the legal info...much appreciated. I'm still choosing my battles in regard to this. Maybe I'll go pick up a bottle of that stuff so I can have the actual information. My concern is that people might try that stuff...not like it...and assume that they know what honey tastes like.(and then, of course, not want to buy"my" honey) I sell all my honey locally so far but it still torques me off to see that stuff with just "Honey" printed...big as life on the label. I may start to feel damamged by this! Again...thanks fro your help in this matter.
Barry
Indianapolis


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## BubbaBob

He might feel "damaged"? Uh oh...another lawyer makes a house payment...LOL

BubbaBob


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## magnet-man

In the process of creating my patent CD, I came across an old patent for a wholesome honey substitute. I think the patent was around 1910 and did not sound very appealing. 

The Cargill product may or may not be a threat to the price of honey. Like it or not when you get right down to it Honey and HFCS bake the same. Honey just has more flavoring, more pollen, more bee parts and bee poop. 

The bakers are using HFCS with a little bit of honey and who can blame them. I buy HFCS for 28 cents a pound. How much do you think it cost when you purchase 5,000 gallons at a time? 

I think where the real threat is in honey sales to consumers. It could very well run some of the same path that butter and margarine had. How many of you have butter in your refrigerator and not margarine. Margarine does not taste like butter but a lot of people prefer it to butter now. 

Read the following link. The bottom of it has some interesting facts about how the dairy producers tried to slow margarine. My dad used to tell me how the margarine was white and if you wanted it to look like butter you had to color it. When he was in the army the troops complained that the cook did not color the margarine. The cook got so mad he colored it every color but yellow. After a week nobody cared that it was white my father said.

http://webexhibits.org/butter/margarine-history.html


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## Kirby Kishbaugh

The big letters is what you pay for but the tiny little letters is what you get.

Kirby Kishbaugh


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## John Russell

"Betcha they come up with some sort of weasel
wording like "North American Honey", so they
can pass off Canadian honey as something akin
to US honey."

Oh don't worry about our honey. 

Anyone who knows honey can tell Canadian honey from American honey by the way it tastes better...










( Chill out boys, Just a joke....)

J.R.


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## Dick Allen

>Anyone who knows honey can tell Canadian honey from American honey by the way it tastes better

Why of course American honey tastes better. 

>Chill out boys, Just a joke

Hey John. Don't worry I'm sure the other Canadians realized you were joking. Still facts are facts...  

eh?


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## BubbaBob

Canadian Honey? Isn't that the same as French Honey.....? LOL


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## Barry Digman

Canadian, American, New Zealand....
Hmmm. Is there an international tasting competition for honey like there is for wine?


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## Jim Fischer

> Is there an international tasting competition 
> for honey like there is for wine?

Maybe Apimondia should hold "blind taste tests".

An old joke about taste tests....

The Florida orange growers wanted to prove that
their juice tasted better than California's juice,
so they sent a team around the country to do
blind taste tests. They decided to mix up
screwdrivers as their test drink (vodka and OJ).

One guy just could not make up his mind, even
after a dozen tastes of each. Finally, he
said - "OK, I know what the problem is - you
need to add more Vodka!"


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## hobbyfarm

First, let me say I love







the way these threads drift off the original topic. It shows the free exchange of ideas is actually alive and well.

Now - back to KFC's "Honey Sauce". Once upon a time, those little packets contained 100% pure, unadulterated, honey to put on your biscuits. So why did they change? To put it harshly, economic survival and lack of customer concern. It's the same reason McDonalds stopped making French Fries from fresh Idaho russets and bought into J. R. Symplot's "just as good and less costly" argument. What? You didn't know that McDonalds had used fresh potatoes for its fries? I must have made a 100,000 pounds of them back then. (To establish the time frame - burgers were 10 cents and cheese burgers were 12 cents.) We used between 1500 and 2000 pounds of raw potatoes per week. That was at just one franchise. Think of how many McD's there are now, and the cost of the equipment to peel, cut, wash, blanch, drain, and fry those potatoes. And add the operation of that equipment by someone marginally smarter than (well, I won't go there). Frankly, I think McD's fries are c__p. I think most pre-processed, bulk manufactured, frozen foods are. But then I'm a Luddite. I mean, I gotta be. I grow my own vegetables, I keep bees, I make my own cheese and soap, and I know where hamburger comes from.

As to the customer - there are people out there who are willing to pay $20/pound for artisan cheese and those who are outraged at paying $3/pound for cheddar (or should I say a cheddar like substance). There are those who will pay extra for organic produce, and those who think GMO's are the salvation of man. I think part of our job is to educate the consumer. Some will learn to appreciate pure, natural products, but the majority will always be concerned with price first.

And, yes, I once worked for McD's, KFC, and J.R. Symplot.

Kevin

Spun ® Honey is a registered trademark of the Sioux Honey Association.


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## Barry Digman

> And, yes, I once worked for McD's, KFC, and J.R. Symplot


Simplot's s a truly remarkable story. I wonder if the guy is still alive. Not so long ago his (privately owned) company owned the largest cattle ranch in the US, not to mention the massive potato operations. Very few people have ever heard of him, yet nearly all have eaten his products at one time or another.


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## hobbyfarm

To all -

Jack's name is spelled "Simplot". I should have know better  , but "Symplot" is an inside joke with the person who pointed me to this website. We both worked at Simplot years ago.

And yes, Jack is still around -

J. R. Simplot Bio 

Kevin


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