Pundit Mailbag —
Hurdles To GlobalGAP
Our piece, EurepGAp Becomes GlobalGAP… When Will We Have An AmeriGAP, brought this critique from New Zealand: As a New Zealand producer who has been subject to EurepGAP for a long period, I would have this to say: Good agricultural practice is, of course, a ‘must have’ these days and a plethora of certifications is […]
Last Chance Once More
Our piece, Last Chance, Literally, To Teach Life Lessons, which chronicled the opportunity given a young Carnegie Mellon professor who has terminal cancer to give a final “Last Lecture,” brought many heartfelt notes thanking us for bringing the piece to their attention. It also brought requests for additional information. Professor Randy Pausch appeared on Good […]
Flight Of The Homogeneous —
Is There Room For Sameness Anymore?
The Pundit is often asked to speak before different commodity groups. Very often we find that the focus of these groups is promoting their produce item based on nutritional facts about the item. Yet in marketing it is often the case that the overt features being marketed are less important than the latent truth those […]
PMA And United
Cease Merger Talks
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. — Ecclesiastes 3:1King James Bible And the time for merger between PMA and United is not now. That is the comeuppance of announcements sent by each association to its members. PMA sent this note: To: All PMA Members Re: […]
Fantastic Friday
It goes without saying that trade shows and conferences offer all kinds of value to participants, and PMA’s Fresh Summit event is like nothing else on earth. There is no other event that incorporates so many learning opportunities, networking opportunities and commercial possibilities. This is widely known and it is why next month in Houston, […]
Pundit’s Mailbag — So Much For Constructive Criticism!!!
Our pieces, Why The Secrecy On Inspection Agency Lab Results? and Inspection Agencies Could Assist In Traceability, both of which dealt with the way the Canadian Food Inspection Agency dealt with the Dole recall, brought this pointed comment from an industry member in Canada: Call this a constructive criticism e-mail: firstly, you are typical of […]
Apply Leafy Green Metrics
To Vegetables
In all the attention being paid to the recall on the Dole salad product, our initial interview with Dole’s Eric Schwartz also contained this tidbit about Dole’s entry into the fresh-cut veg business: Q: After the spinach crisis, you made the point that Dole was moving toward becoming more autonomous in salad production to have […]
Tesco Expands Plans For
More Openings In California
Preparations are apace for Tesco’s rollout. The Pundit is on his way to the U.K. Wednesday night so will check out some Tesco stores there and see if we can discern anything that might be relevant to the U.S. launch. Previously we gave Tesco’s initial locations in Nevada, Arizona and Los Angeles. Now Tesco gives […]
Pundit’s Mailbag —
False Positives
Not Surprising
Our discussion of the recent Dole recall, which we covered both here and here, and especially our exasperation on the testing, brought this pointed letter: We’re not surprised by any of these findings.In fact this is what we would consider the norm.When pulling a second sample from a bag where a PCR presumptive positive has […]
Green Homes As Status Symbol
If you want to know the degree to which “greenness” has become a status symbol, just take a look at this house being built not far from Pundit headquarters. CNN did a story pointing out that luxury home buyers now want environmentally friendly estates: After 20 years of building multi-million-dollar mega-mansions, real estate developer Frank […]
