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CHICAGO (Reuters) - Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE:KFT - News), the largest North American food maker, on Monday reported lower quarterly profit and cut its full-year forecast, hurt by higher costs for dairy products and increased marketing costs. Kraft, the maker of Oreo cookies and Oscar Mayer meats, earned $698 million, or 41 cents a share in the second quarter, compared with $949 million, or 55 cents, a year-earlier. Excluding costs related to a restructuring program announced in January in response to declining market share, earnings were 46 cents a share. Analysts had expected earnings of 46 cents a share before...

FREEP KRAFT You will hear the keys clicking as the operator that takes your call records your comments about what you think of these multi-million dollar bonuses amid layoffs for thousands of workers. Call them. Tell them you just heard about the bonuses for their execs and the layoffs for thousands of workers and that you will not be buying their products anymore. HERE IS THE LINK TO THE KRAFT WEBSITE FOR FORM SUBMISSION. If you require immediate assistance or would like to speak to a representative from Kraft Foods, please call us at 1-800-323-0768 with questions about our products...

CHICAGO (AP) -- Kraft Foods Inc. said Tuesday it will eliminate 6,000 jobs, or 6 percent of its work force, and close 20 plants worldwide as part of a restructuring that follows more than a year of disappointing sales and earnings for the biggest U.S. food company.About 1,300 salaried positions in North America will be eliminated in the first quarter, with the remaining cuts occurring over the next three years, Kraft said.The moves were disclosed in Kraft's fourth-quarter earnings release Tuesday afternoon. Net income of $869 million represented a 7 percent drop from a year earlier -- the company's latest...

Analysts also talk of plant closings Kraft Foods Inc. is expected to announce thousands of job cuts early next week as part of Chief Executive Roger Deromedi's plan to cut costs and put more muscle into marketing. In research notes to clients, Wall Street analysts said Thursday that they expect Deromedi to reveal job cuts of up to 10 percent of its North American workforce and plant closures when he discusses fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday. The Northfield-based company is expected to report earnings of 50 cents per share, down a cent from a year earlier, according to analysts' consensus estimates from...

<p>NEW YORK -- We'll return to our regularly scheduled program right after this brief message. And before we get to that brief message -- well, here's a briefer one.</p> <p>Pop!</p> <p>As an "NYPD Blue" rerun unspools on Court TV, the screen shrinks and shifts. Up from the bottom rises a message: This episode of the famed cop show is brought to you by Planters' nuts, the salty Kraft Foods Inc. snack. As a movie plays on AOL Time Warner Inc. cable-counterpart TNT, a quiz runs across the bottom of the screen, asking viewers a question about the film. It's sponsored by United Parcel Service Inc. Earlier this year, TNT tested a tactic that had a message from an American Express Co. financial-services operation appear -- just as Steve Martin faced a particularly thorny money decision during "Father of the Bride II."</p>

July 25 — There may be a big deal stirring in candy land. The trust that controls Hershey Foods Co., an American icon that is the nation’s largest candy and chocolate maker, is exploring a sale of the company, it said in a press release Thursday. Sources familiar with the matter said such a deal could fetch more than $10 billion. For years, the storied company has been a bystander during a food-industry consolidation, widely regarded as untouchable because of the trust’s loyalty to its mission and its hometown of Hershey, Pa. But now tumult in the corporate world has...

Filed at 7:27 p.m. ET LOS ANGELES (AP) -- An environmental group sued chocolate manufacturers Wednesday, contending chocolate contains potentially hazardous levels of lead and cadmium and should carry warning labels. The suit, by the nonprofit American Environmental Safety Institute, alleges chocolate products expose consumers -- especially children -- to potentially dangerous levels of the metals. A state investigation last year discounted the lawsuit's claims, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration researchers have found children younger than 6 who eat lots of chocolate take in 6 percent or less of the total daily amount of lead allowable by law. An...