Birds Eye "C&W", for "California & Washington" frozen mixed vegetables: "Product of China".

[laundry_queen]

27. Where I am, this is a huge problem in some stores

I'm in Canada, and of course, being from Canada, we have to import a lot of produce. I'm used to seeing all kinds of out of season stuff from all over the world.

However. I do buy local as much as possible (we have a lot of 'hot house' type of farms popping up everywhere for things like cucumbers and tomatoes) but obviously, I cannot do that for everything. Still, I am pretty careful about checking out the package.

I went to our local health food store to buy some raw nuts. I chose a package that had Canada in the product name on the front and also said, "Canadian Certified Organic" from some Canadian certifying body. When I got them home, I was reading the back and in SUPER TINY print, in a lighter ink color, it said, "packaged in Canada. Grown in China" WTF?!?!!? I was so incredibly pissed and of course brought it to the attention of the health food store staff, who only had lame 'they still have to follow strict guidelines in China to be organic' platitudes to give me.

It's not just that it was grown in China - it's that there was a DELIBERATE attempt to mislead the public. They KNOW people don't accept Chinese grown food for the most part. So they TRY to make it sound Canadian (or in your case, American) and hope no one reads the fine print on the back. And they charge MORE because people buy it thinking it's a product from their own country. That has really made me mad and I refuse to buy that particular product anymore (or shop at that store anymore).

Luckily, 2 large grocery store chains in my area have made a concerted effort to be more 'local' and they put the country of origin in bold on everything fresh, and their packaging is pretty straightforward in their store brands.