Pundit’s Mailbag — Wegmans Responds
To ‘Double Standard’ Allegation
We’ve written about the issue of food safety and locally grown produce previously with pieces such as Food Safety And Locally Grown and Getting Locally Grown Up To Standard, but our recent piece, New York Times Article Reveals Double Standard On Food Safety, caught the interest of many. Some were large growers applauding attention being […]
Whole Foods Meat Recall
Leads To Inspection Change
And Lesson For All…
Including the Produce Industry
Talk about an Achilles heel in the food safety system — and not just with meat. It was big news when Whole Foods had to do a beef recall. The headline on the article in The Washington Post ran was descriptive: Whole Foods Recalls Beef Processed At Plant Long At Odds With USDA. But the […]
Wal-Mart Prepares Launch
Of Its ‘Marketside’ Concept
Wal-Mart’s new small store concept, which, as we discussed here, supposedly is going to be called Marketside, made the news recently due to some Help Wanted ads the chain was running. The Financial Times ran a piece entitled, Wal-Mart Sees Marketside as a $10bn Chain that explained: Wal-Mart’s executives have described the Marketside stores as […]
Award-Winning Articles
Raise Topics To Consider
We just arrived back in Pundit headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida, and were greeted with some nice news. The American Society of Business Publication Editors has awarded the Pundit its Gold Award for the Best Editorial/Editor’s Letter in the United States for his 2007 work in PRODUCE BUSINESS magazine. We don’t like to crow about […]
Baja Grower ‘Held Hostage’ To FDA’s ‘Ban’ On Mexican Peppers
In the course of our extensive coverage of the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak, we have on several occasions called for the FDA to limit its de facto market blocks to areas actually implicated in a problem. For example, we ran a piece, Free Baja, calling on the FDA to provide access for Baja tomatoes as it […]
Perishable Thoughts
We decided to take the Jr. Pundits to Williamsburg, in the Great Commonwealth of Virginia, to expose them to the early roots of the American nation. They have a program where the children can be “apprentices” in many of the trades. So they tried being silversmiths, cabinet-makers and, their favorite, brick-makers. Brick making is actually […]
Perishable Thoughts — Ego And Public Health
With an industry focus on how to get public health authorities to acknowledge that their original position — that tomatoes were the vector for the outbreak of salmonella Saintpaul — was unjustified, we thought this quote from Colin Powell was apropos: “Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, […]
Whole Foods Faces Tough Economic Times
Whole Foods announced its earnings and held a conference call in which, among other things, it announced some major changes — such as suspending dividends: While we are still producing strong cash flow, the challenging economic environment appears to be negatively impacting our sales and bottom line. This, combined with our commitment to maintaining financial […]
New York Times Article Reveals
Double Standard On Food Safety
The New York Times ran a piece, Supermarket Chains Narrow Their Sights, about the locally grown movement. Written by Marion Burros, the piece quotes a number of people active in the industry, such as Brian Nicholson of Red Jacket Orchards , Geneva, NY, Will Wedge at Hannaford, Dave Corsi at Wegmans, Tim Cullen at King […]
Error, The Industry
And The Implication Of Tomatoes
Part I What with all the hearings and such, the news passed relatively unnoticed. On one day NewStar announced a recall of fresh cilantro from Mexico due to a risk for salmonella; then the next day NewStar announced that it was “unrecalling” as the whole thing was due to a lab error. The whole incident […]
