About 60 million cans and foil pouches of wet dog and cat food made by Canada-based Menu Foods Income Fund--affecting 88 brands, including big names like Iams and Eukanuba--are being recalled. The food became linked to at least 10 recent animal deaths. Menu Foods spokeswoman Sarah Tuite says the complaints from consumers coincided with the use of a new ingredient from a new supplier, but she declined to give more details until tests confirmed the problem. The company has stopped using the ingredient. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration collected more samples from the Menu Foods plant in …

Quiznos is devoting much of its salad line to flatbread. Dunkin' Donuts is testing flatbread sandwiches. Arby's is promoting flatbread melts. And Stouffer's is rolling out a line of fancy-sounding flatbread pizzas. Flatbread--typically made from flattened dough to project the flavor of whatever is placed in it or on it--is emerging as the hottest thing since sliced bread. The number of new products with the name flatbread more than tripled to 66 last year, vs. 20 in 2005. "Flatbread connotes upscale--whether or not it actually is," says Lynn Dornblaser, new products guru at research firm Mintel. Desite …

Heineken, Europe's largest brewery, intends to take beer branding to a new dimension by creating a chain of Heineken bars worldwide. The first recently opened at Hong Kong's international airport. It sells other beers as well as wine and spirits, but only Heineken-owned brands are available on tap. TV screens show Heineken ads and sports events sponsored by the company. Erik van de Ven, Heineken's manager for duty-free and travel retail, says the brewer wants to be to beer what Starbucks is to coffee. The U.K. long had a tradition of brewer-owned pubs ,until the government ordered them to …

WPP Group CEO Martin Sorrell testified yesterday that the former wife of Marco Benatti--who Sorrell fired as WPP's country manager for Italy in Jan. 2006--had warned him that Benatti had threatened to kill him. Sorrell took the stand in London during the first day of a libel trial he initiated against Benatti and Marco Tinelli, president-CEO of the FullSix media company started by Benatti and partly owned by WPP. After the disclosure, the judge cleared the courtroom of journalists and was closeted in a closed session with both sides' legal teams for about half an hour. The trial revolves …

To celebrate Frito-Lay's 75th anniversary this year, the company is reintroducing the Frito Kid icon on a limited-edition version of Fritos Corn Chips. He was last seen on-pack in the 1950s. Frito has also introduced three new items that bear the Smart Spot on its packaging, signifying that the items conform to health standards set by public health organizations, such as the Food and Drug Administration and the National Academy of Sciences. The products are Baked Tostitos Scoops!, a low-calorie, low-fat chip that is its own salsa scoop; a new Tostitos All Natural Picante Sauce; and the …

Robert J. Herbold, former senior vice president at Procter & Gamble who left in 1994 to become COO of Microsoft, is returning to Cincinnati this weekend to participate in a company reunion. Now retired, Herbold has written a book--"Seduced by Success: How the Best Companies Survive the 9 Traps of Winning"--that details his risk-taking career. He started at P&G in 1968 with a Ph.D. in computer science and an aptitude for running digitally simulated chemical reactions. He was soon put in charge of the company's R&D data centers, before being transferred to marketing. A one-year assignment there …

Experts in Great Britain say that a cultural shift is rapidly taking place in which foodstuffs once considered niche and expensive are now going mainstream. Consumers are avidly buying fair-trade groceries, organic foods and sustainably farmed produce. There are now 1,500 different fair-trade goods on the market, and sales reached more than $500 million last year, up 46% from 2005. Purveyors of organic (chemical-free) foods report that sales are growing at 30% a year, adding up to $1.9 billion annually (out of a total national grocery turnover of around $135 billion.) Some argue that ethical food …

The Food and Drug Administration yesterday ordered the makers of the well-known drugs Ambien and Lunesta and the producers of 11 other commonly used sleeping pills to put warnings about possible side effects on their packaging and to create patient fliers explaining how to use the medications safely. The fliers, which the FDA says it requires when it sees a significant public-health concern, will be handed out at pharmacies when consumers fill their prescriptions. Although the agency says that problems with the drugs are rare, reports of the unusual side effects have grown, as sleeping pill usage has …

Advertisers such as Pontiac and Wachovia are augmenting their TV campaigns on CBS' NCAA men's basketball tournament broadcasts by tapping into individual schools through their athletic departments' official Web sites. Big marketers always want to reach elusive college students, but now is a time to target alumni for the 65 teams chosen to vie for the national championship. These grads not only have deep pockets, but intense emotional connections to their schools. The colleges are getting help matching up with marketers from companies that put these small sites together into a network, operate them and sell …

Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. will launch a new sugarless gum this summer called "5" for the five senses. It will be Wrigley's first new gum since it debuted sugar-free Orbit--the nation's fastest-growing gum brand--in 2001. 5 is a stick gum that will be sold in a sleek envelope designed to attract teens and young adults--about one-third of the nation's gum chewers--with features such as etching that glows under black light. It will be available in North America in three flavors: "Rain," "Cobalt" and "Flare." A 15-stick pack will sell for $1.49. Unlike Wrigley's other products, 5 is designed …