He obviously wasn't canny enough to keep his canned comments from getting him canned!
Campbell's CISO canned after lawsuit alleges hour-long rant against staff and customers
Campbell's has placed its US CISO and vice president on temporary leave while it investigates allegations that he disparaged customers, the company's products, and Indian staffers. Martin Bally was secretly recorded by a former colleague during a September 2024 meeting, during which it is claimed he described the soup merchant …
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Tuesday 25th November 2025 17:00 GMT John Miles
For those who don't know In 1869, new rations of tinned mutton were introduced for British seamen. They were unimpressed by it and suggested it might be the butchered remains of Fanny Adams, an eight-year-old English girl who was extraordinarily brutally murdered in 1867 by a solicitor's clerk. "Fanny Adams" became slang for mediocre mutton, stew, scarce leftovers and then anything worthless, hence "Sweet Fanny Adams" - to mean nothing.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 16:14 GMT Snake
Re: just a viewpoint
Actually, no, VicMortimer statement has factual rationale, do the research yourself.
Over the past number of years, Campbell's Soup has seen a decline in sales, starting from at least 2017 (the earliest articles I could find discussing such). And for quite a while now, Campbell's soups have been called out for high sodium content as well (believing to mask them using less than optimum ingredients). Only in these most recent fiscal quarters has Campbell's stated a bit of a sales comeback, they are stating that soup sales are increasing again as families seek to stretch food budgets and cook more at home. Campbell's faces stiff competition from alternative product declaring gourmet recipes, higher quality ingredients, or reduced sodium. Their stock has been down as they struggle against these corporate problems.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 17:43 GMT BartyFartsLast
Re: just a viewpoint
I'm surprised people buy soup if they're trying to cook more at home because it's so simple to make and you don't need any special gadgets (though if you can scrape together a few tenners for a soup maker it's even less time consuming)
Also, Maybe if Campbells improved their stock they'd sell more soup?
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 18:02 GMT Snake
Re: just a viewpoint
Just recently I bought my first can of soup in a very, very long time: cream of mushroom, to use as a base for a recipe. Campbell's was an option...so I went with Pacific :p 1/3-less sodium and a brand I could trust more in terms of using somewhat better ingredients. Campbell's soups have an old-fashioned rap that is hard to throw off, maybe just update their packaging to make me feel like I'm not buying both the experience & taste of 1950??
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 09:56 GMT MachDiamond
Re: He's not wrong.
"Their soup is shit. That's not new though, it's been shit for decades. It was shit before GMO anything even existed."
It's not shit, it's just meh. There's nothing about it for anybody to recommend. Until I started making my own soup, I just figured that soup was bland and boring, name-brand or generic. I suppose if they put too much flavor in, it won't hit that lowest common denominator market that bean counters strive for.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 10:25 GMT Peter Gathercole
Re: He's not wrong.
What I find interesting about these comments about soup, and particularly canned soup is that in the modern day, people have forgotten about why soup, and stews even exist.
Today, to make a soup, stew or any other meal that relies on long, slow cooking, people in developed countries expect that grade A ingredients are used. We've become conditioned to it. But the purpose of these types of food was to make best use of what couldn't be used in other dishes. Often soups were the last step in making best use of bones and other less desirable but perfectly edible food. Carrots a bit dried and wizened? Chop them up and put them in the soup. Meat a bit grisly, put it in the soup and cook for several hours. I'm sure that many Victorian household guides and cookbooks would have celebrated this way of using food that would otherwise go to waste.
This was life, as food was expensive, not always fresh and every scrap had to be used. And the results were often quite palatable, especially if you didn't have access to better ingredients. Many of the thick soups or broths were actually made to make it slightly less likely that you could tell exactly what it was you were eating. Oxtail, it's exactly what the name is. Pea and ham, well the ham part would probably be the cheeks and boiled trotters from the pig, something that now is described as 'mechanically recovered meats'. Any soup with carrots in, chances are that it was the top's, bottoms and peelings of the carrots (hopefully well washed) that would make it into the soups. Vegetable soups, this would often be mostly cheap root vegetables. This is what soups were!
When companies stared making canned soups, chances are that they started doing the same, but in the years when canning was a means of preserving food for lean times or transport, I'm pretty certain that they started using better ingredients than were traditionally used in soups made in the kitchen. I would suggest that before the age of refrigerators and freezers, canned food was probably some of the better and safer foods to eat when times were lean, or fresh foods were unavailable or too expensive. And it still can form part of a balanced diet.
I would have to check the ingredients lists, and I know that in more recent years, the preponderance of food additives may have crept into even tinned food, but as these additives are often designed to prolong the life of food, many tinned products, where the canning process itself is the preservation method just don't need a lot of these additives. There can be high quality tinned foods.
I still eat tinned soup. It's a quick, simple and satisfying replacement for something I'd have to spend time making, and often much better for you than, say, instant noodles or chilled ready meals. And I even enjoy the brands and varieties that I buy, although I've not bought Campbells for a while. I just think that too many people nowadays are squeamish about eating meats and vegetables that do not make the highest grades. We've been spoiled by high availability, low cost foods that we can ignore the bits that we don't like to think that we're eating!
It's a very elitist view.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 14:10 GMT NXM
Re: He's not wrong.
I wish I could upvote that more.
Armed with only a slow cooker I can make stock from chicken bones. Then separate it off, add dried beans, lentils and/or veg plus any leftover chicken bits and presto: soup!
Start off with a cheap meat cut like brisket or skirt, apply the slow cooker, and there's a really tasty stew - more tasty than expensive cuts too.
In times gone by the slow cooker would've been the oven on your range which also heated the house, set to slow. Roasting was done by suspending your meat on a chain and rotating it with a clockwork thingy over an open fire (or a spit dog if you were all posh like). In rural parts like ours, people made hams and bacon in autumn because if you didn't, you'd starve over winter. Our farmhouse still has the meat hooks on the ceiling.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 06:00 GMT MachDiamond
Re: He's not wrong.
"(or a spit dog if you were all posh like)"
A "Turn Spit" became a specific breed and sadly now said to be extinct. I can remember learning about them when I visited a ~600yo pub in Nottingham that had a fireplace with a wheel on the side for the dog. I thought I remembered the name of the pub, but can't find it on Google Maps to give reference. I have a brochure from the pub in my travel collections somewhere. It was around Sherwood forest IIRC.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 05:47 GMT MachDiamond
Re: He's not wrong.
"Often soups were the last step in making best use of bones and other less desirable but perfectly edible food. "
What I've found that works really well is Costco/Sam's Club rotisserie chickens. One I have the meat off of the bones, they go into the stock pot/slow cooker with a bay leaf and maybe some thyme for a load of broth that I can for later.
I tend to use Grade A ingredients in my soup when the garden is producing and I have more than I can use. I'm learning more about potato skin soup and using the tops and tails of things as well although I usually put those on the compost pile to keep building up good garden soil. I've cut back on canning this past year due to a lack of storage which I hope to resolve this winter.
Lower grade cuts of meat are great for slow cooking and serious value for money. My mom made lots of stew when I was young for winter time suppers. It was easy to braise off and chuck everything in the crock pot in the morning along with a packet of beef stew seasonings. Always good with a chunk of day-old bread for dipping. It was something us horrible children wouldn't complain about.
I'm seeing more cooking shows featuring things to do with the bits we normally cut off apart from composting, but sometimes the compost pile is the best place for it.
Big thumbs up to Peter!
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 15:23 GMT JWLong
Re: He's not wrong.
I, having done a bit of work for the canned food industry (Walla Walla, Wa.) can honestly tell you that you do not want to see the quality of the ingedients that go into canned foods.
Do you know that up to 30% of canned spinach is tree leaves (or other leaves)!?
I won't say about tomatoes, carrorts, or other common veggies (like potatoes)!
I've worked rendering plants that had better quality product in the door!
But, for some idiot working for a major name food company, going off like that is pretty fucking dumb!
He's probably working for ADM making animal food ingedients now, now that's the bottom of the barrel there!
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Tuesday 25th November 2025 16:20 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: The Real Problem
I'd guess somebody halfway up the foodchain (err maybe not the best word in the circumstances) found himself with a bit of a dilemma. He couldn't ignore it but didn't dare pass it further up and took what seemed likely the easiest way out. Obviously legal didn't take advice from Ms Streisand before deciding to fight it rather than make a quick, quiet settlement.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 10:02 GMT MachDiamond
Re: The Real Problem
"A lowly analyst meeting with the CISO in a restaurant to discuss salary, claims to have recorded the CISO ranting in a public place, waits 3 months to express their "concern"."
It looks like that raise never came through. It can take time to work up the chain with such a hot potato. I expect the manager that had it dumped in his lap was not thrilled.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 10:00 GMT MachDiamond
Re: The Real Problem
"The real problem is how the corporation acted wrongfully in shit-canning a worker who dared to point out a serious problem with one of its executives."
Big companies need to be very careful about tossing somebody out that's made a serious complaint about a senior exec. A tribunal or court is likely to side with the sacked employee and award them back-pay, wrongful termination pay, mental duress pay and a brand new car! Besides, it will mean further invitations to depart to a few more execs as sacrificial offerings have to be made.
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Tuesday 25th November 2025 16:44 GMT disgruntled yank
Highly processed
If you want soup that is not highly processed, you can make it yourself. The whole point of Campbell's Soup is uniformity and predictability. I got through quite a bit of it my childhood, now I'd just as soon get my excessive salt from pretzels.
Andy Warhol made quite a bit of money selling prints of Campbell's soup cans. Perhaps The Register's Standards Soviet can denominate the takings of this lawsuit in Warhol prints.
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Tuesday 25th November 2025 18:43 GMT that one in the corner
Not what their website intends
The claim on the Campbells website is that "Our Soup Comes With A Story" - but it isn't usually as juicy as today's tale!
This chap seems to have made a Bally idiot of himself.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 10:06 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Make your own
"You will never buy tinned again."
With a good local market and a slow cooker, there's no going back. Soup is dead easy. I did a big batch of basic veg, onion and minestrone this summer and canned it for this winter. Cheap and really tasty as I don't hold back on ingredients.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 13:14 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: Make your own
With a good local market and a slow cooker
Got a beef stew (nice bit of shin, managed to use it before my wife cooked it up for her national dish [1]) in the slow-cooker at the moment. Beef shin, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, onion, garlic, celery, some herbs, well-reduced red wine with a splash of marsala, mushroom ketchup [2]..
I'm quite looking forward to eating it.
[1] Cornish pasty. Fortunately, we didn't have any swede in the veg fridge..
[2] Prefer it to Worcestershire sauce. More... mushroomy.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 06:11 GMT MachDiamond
Re: RFK FDA
"Pay for a full bag and get a half.... etc."
This product sold by weight, not by volume. Some settling of contents may have taken place during shipping and handling.
The translation is that making the box bigger so it looks like more value for money is less expensive than the product. On the other hand, generic products that compete on price will sometimes come in full to the top packages. I try to buy staple ingredients in bulk as much as possible. It's time to get another sack of rolled oats and I need to check on flour. Maybe the walnuts were a bit of a mistake, but the almonds get used a bunch. I'd rather have an almond meal crust on my tarts than graham cracker. Almond and crushed biscuits works well too.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
