Pundit’s Mailbag — Consumer Has Shared Responsibility In Food Safety
Our piece, Consumers And Foodservice Operators Should Not Rewash Fresh-cut Produce, detailed that a panel of experts had studied the available research and came to this conclusion. At least one grower thinks the panel made a mistake by failing to emphasize consumer responsibility for safe produce: Unfortunately, the report focuses too much on the aspects […]
Pundit’s Mailbag — Traceability Initiative
Requires Broader Base Of Participants
Our piece, Traceability Initiative Lacks Full Industry Representation, pointed out that the steering committee of the CPMA/PMA/United Fresh joint effort on traceability was lacking players from important segments of the industry. We reminded readers of a letter we received from Alan Siger of Consumers Produce pointing out that, by law, commission merchants were obligated to […]
Will Threat Of Rotten Produce
Be Enough To Solve Immigration Issue?
The Washington Post ran an editorial entitled, Rot in the Fields, that pretty much reads as if it were written by a coalition of produce grower groups: ROT IN THE FIELDS As farmworkers become scarcer, Congress dithers. CHECK OUT the asparagus you have for dinner, the cucumber in your salad and the pear on your […]
EU’s Banana Policy Breaks WTO Rules
Back in July, we ran a piece entitled Banana Import Policies In Europe Defy Logic And Ultimately Hurt Consumers in which we pointed out: The whole purpose of the WTO is to say that countries can’t choose favorites. There are exceptions for countries that don’t have normal relations or what we used to call “most-favored-nation” […]
Will Tesco Regret
Operating Its Own Commissary?
The Financial Times ran a piece entitled, Tesco Adopts a New Business Recipe, which points out that Tesco in the US is operating its own central commissary, as opposed to operations in the UK and elsewhere, where it relies on outside firms to produce its prepared meals: Tesco has become a food manufacturer for the […]
Tesco’s Secret Expansion Plan?
The Times of London ran a piece entitled, Tesco Begins its American Dream By Seeking Gold In California, which reports that although the operation is not yet a month old, Tesco is planning a major expansion, including building a twin of its Riverside facility in Stockton: Only three weeks after opening its first American stores, […]
Pundit’s Mailbag — Cory Clack-Streef
Remembered By Friends
Our piece, In Remembrance Of Cory Clack-Streef, brought this kind note: I feel compelled to offer you a note a thanks for your remembrance of Cory Clack-Streef. Most of my peers in export development working for the 22 Northeast and Mid-West Departments of Agriculture knew Cory because Faye Clack Communications was the Canadian contractor with […]
Grapefruit May Make
Medicines More Powerful
Last time we turned our attention to grapefruit, it was to blast a study that purported to link grapefruit to breast cancer. We entitled that piece Beware Of Headlines About Dubious Grapefruit Cancer Study. We felt horrible for the grapefruit industry as we expressed at that time: Those poor grapefruit farmers. First they get hit […]
Tesco, Polar Bears
And Social Irresponsibility
Simon Uwins is the Chief Marketing Officer for Tesco’s Fresh & Easy chain, and for almost three months now he has kept posted on its web site a piece he wrote declaring that every Fresh & Easy store that opens will have a photo of polar bears in the back room and every new employee […]
Some Food Safety Leadership Council Members Back Down On Demands
We have run many pieces regarding the Food Safety Leadership Council; you can read the most recent ones here, here, here and here. We previously explained that after the vituperative letters that went out here, here and here, quiet discussions are now going on both with individual vendors and the larger industry. Although Food Safety […]
