Costco Recalls Mexican Grown, U.S. Packed Baby Carrots From Canadian Stores
Late in the afternoon on Monday, we received news of some food safety issues with carrots labeled as being from Mexico, packed in Los Angeles and distributed by Costco in Canada: The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is warning the public not to consume Los Angeles Salad Company Baby Carrots described below because the product […]
Whole Foods/Wild Oats Merger May Benefit Kroger And Other Chains
As soon as the announcement was made, we ran a piece entitled Whole Foods To Acquire Wild Oats: Circling The Wagons As Others Sell Organics. The piece brought a complimentary note from one of America’s most esteemed specialty food retailers: Just a note to say how much I enjoyed your “take” on the merger between […]
Newsweek’s Global Warming Cover Called ‘Misleading’ By One Of Its Own
Newsweek ran a cover story on global warming or, more exactly, a cover story hypothesizing some vast denial machine that was covering up the truth. It was one of the most irresponsible pieces of journalism we’ve read in awhile on the cover of a major magazine. And they were called to task on it by […]
Lessons From Hershey’s Chocolate
We have run a lot of articles lately related to the Produce for Better Health Foundation and the Fruits and Veggies — More Matters program, including Pundit’s Mailbag — ‘More Matters” Can be A Rallying Cry For The Industry, another piece entitled More Matters And The Need For Supporting Research and most recently, pundit’s Pulse […]
Expert On Chinese Garlic Weighs In On Food Safety Issue
Here at the Pundit, we’ve been fortunate to have the benefit of insight from Jim Provost of I Love Produce many times in past, including here, here and here. As we got deeper into the controversy regarding produce from China and, specifically, garlic from China, we were appreciative when Jim suggested we could get some […]
Consumers Not So Fast To ‘Go Green’
Yankelovich has a new study out related to the “green” issue. Here is how they pitch it: A quick search on Nexis for keyword “green” returns more than 3,000 results. Perhaps no industry feels the effects of “Green-mania” more than food and beverage. The organic food movement has spawned a $23 billion industry that includes […]
Bruce Peterson Lands At Naturipe As Its New President/CEO
Bruce Peterson, who built Wal-Mart’s produce operation from scratch and — as we mentioned in Wal-Mart’s Bruce Peterson Resigns — left the retailer as the Senior Vice President and General Merchandise Manager of Perishables for Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., has accepted a position as President and Chief Executive Officer of Naturipe Farms LLC. Since Bruce left […]
Pundit’s Mailbag — Chinese Produce Imports And Retail Responsibilities
We ran a short piece entitled, Garlic/Ginger Erratum, which explained that though an article we wrote under the name, More Food Safety Lessons From Chinese Ginger Recall, was correct, an e-mail announcement line mistakenly said garlic, not ginger. We published the erratum to make clear that the recall dealt with ginger — not garlic. A […]
Chilean Avocado Marketing Goes On Despite Crop Loss
The news is cold for Chilean avocados. The Chilean Hass Avocado Committee issued this statement: Impact of Antarctic Cold Wave on 07-08 Chilean Hass Avocado Crop Based on a careful review and assessment by industry experts and growers of the Hass avocado production areas that were damaged by the Antarctic cold wave that hit central […]
Serving Jingoism At An Omaha Hilton Restaurant
The Pundit family vacation ended with a few days in Omaha, where we attended a wedding. We stayed at the largest hotel in Nebraska, the Omaha Hilton, where the focus of its restaurant, the Liberty Tavern, was interesting, especially considering we just ran a piece entitled, The Problem With Food Miles. All over the hotel, […]
