And Finally, The Funnies Section…
There is an Alaskan writer named Chad Carpenter who produces a comic strip called Tundra. He must know that the Jr. Pundits are obsessed with Frosty the Snowman, for he sent along some produce humor perfect for the 5-year-old set: You can tell your local newspaper editor to subscribe here.
Hawaii Five-0
The Pundit is leaving Saturday for a special trip. We’ve had occasion to discuss the Pundit Poppa and Pundit Mom in this space before. Now we can combine them as their 50th wedding anniversary is coming up in January, and to celebrate that as well as the Pundit Pop’s recovery from leukemia via a stem […]
Good Advice For 2008
As we head into Christmas and the end of the year, we thought we would take the opportunity to revisit with Randy Pausch. We ran two pieces featuring Randy; first, Last Chance, Literally, To Teach Life Lessons, which told the story of a young Carnegie Mellon professor who has been diagnosed with a fatal illness […]
PMA Education Foundation
Serious About Growing The Industry
Our piece, Pundit’s Mailbag — Protocol Lesson For PMA Education Foundation Students, brought a number of responses, including this fiery one from one of the most important women in the produce industry, Lorri Koster of Mann Packing, who, among other things was the first woman to ever chair a national produce trade association when she […]
Too Many Concerns Still Exist Over
Organic Certification In China
One of the important issues that we have dealt with this year is food safety and China. We’ve run many pieces exploring different aspects of this problem, from counterfeiting to pesticides, from the difficulty of assuring accreditation is legitimate to the role of bribery in Chinese culture. Here is a selection of some of the […]
Fresh Basil Recall Brings Additional Concerns About FDA’s Safety Procedures
As we head into Christmas, here is little gift the industry could have done without: Top Line Specialty Produce Recalls “Green Paradise” Basil Because of Possible Health Risk Contact: Alberto Martinez (213) 747-9200 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — December 19, 2007 — Top Line Specialty Produce of Los Angeles, California, is voluntary recalling its 12 x […]
Pundit’s Mailbag — Protocol Lesson For
PMA Education Foundation Students
Our piece introducing the new board of the PMA Educational Foundation and highlighting the Foundation’s initial fundraising efforts brought this comment from the chief executive of a company that has fertilized the industry with many people it brought in on an entry level: I just read the Pundit article, PMA Education Foundation Looks To Attract […]
Wayne McKnight To Leave Wal-Mart
One of the great joys of attending the Canadian Produce Marketing Association convention is that its small scale allows for an intimacy that the large US conventions simply lack. One of the privileges that the Pundit has enjoyed over the years at that event was to sit down with Wayne McKnight over a coffee or […]
Michael Pollan’s Sustainability Arguments Unsustainable In
Context Of Economics
Michael Pollan is the author of numerous books related to the food industry and sustainability issues. Most famously he authored, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, which the publisher describes this way: What should we have for dinner? The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, […]
Was Tesco’s Real Estate Decision
A Result OF Hubris Or Humility?
One of the issues that keeps coming up in our discussion of Tesco’s new operation in America is real estate. It is fair to say that retail and real estate always intersect. We previously pointed out that Tesco was going to have a problem and wind up with a lot of sub-standard real estate simply […]
