Photos Reveal Avocado Damage From Freeze
A hat tip to Laurie Hill and Jan DeLyser of the California Avocado Commission, who forwarded these pictures of freeze damage from Scott Mather, a California avocado grower. Scott shot the photos in and around his ranch, the Stony Creek Ranch in Morro Bay, California. Scott explains the situation: “I probably lost 70 percent of […]
United Calls For Mandatory, Federal,
Uniform Food Safety Standards
The Pundit had the pleasure of dining recently with United Fresh Co-Chairmen Maureen Marshall of Torrey Farms and Mark Miller of Fresh From Texas/Energy Sprouts, as well as other United board members, staff executives and their spouses. It is hard to leave such a dinner without feeling the produce industry has a bright future. The […]
Buyer-led Food Safety Initiative
Recap XXXI
There is an ad-hoc group that started it all, the National Restaurant Association has its group working on a program and the Food Marketing Institute held a conference. All these buyer-led initiatives can get confusing, so to assist the trade in keeping track of them all, we are publishing this recap of coverage all in […]
Pundit’s Mailbag —
Auditor Qualification And Certification
One thing all the food safety proposals being discussed involve is the use of auditors. Our piece Pundit’s Mailbag — Food Safety Audits And Government Oversight dealt with the proposal to set up a new state-run audit function in California. Some readers thought this an excellent place to kick off a discussion on the subject […]
Pundit’s Pulse Of The Industry:
Florida Tomato Committee’s Reggie Brown
The Florida Tomato Committee lost its battle to restrict sales of UglyRipe Brand tomatoes, but a more important long-term battle is to assure trade buyers and consumers safe product and, on that score, the industry is working hard to succeed. This interview, conducted by Pundit Investigator and Special Projects Editor Mira Slott, is part of […]
UglyRipe Tomatoes Now Available
Year-Round
The Pundit has been writing about the saga regarding the UglyRipe brand tomato for over two years now. For example, in November of 2004, in Pundit sister publication, PRODUCE BUSINESS, we wrote: A look at the UglyRipe makes it clear that the notion of cosmetic standards — the only criteria for grading tomatoes — is […]
Pundit Rewind LIX
The Pundit originally ran the Pundit Rewind on September 21, 2006. We continuously update it in order to keep everyone organized with respect to reference material on this subject; we have updated it with new items and run it again today. Spinach Crisis Summary With so much having been written in so short a time, […]
Botulism And Carrot Juice
Summary XLIX
We’ve been asked to make available in one place our coverage of the recall by Wm. Bolthouse Farms of certain 100% carrot juice products and the broader implications of this issue for food safety. This piece is updated regularly and will be re-run to include new coverage of this outbreak and issue. We initiated our […]
Botulism And Carrot Juice
Summary XLVIII
We’ve been asked to make available in one place our coverage of the recall by Wm. Bolthouse Farms of certain 100% carrot juice products and the broader implications of this issue for food safety. This piece is updated regularly and will be re-run to include new coverage of this outbreak and issue. We initiated our […]
Pundit’s Mailbag — Food Safety Audits
And Government Oversight
We received a letter from a third-party auditor warning of a problem with the way the proposed California Leafy Green Handler Marketing Agreement and Marketing Order are structured: My, and others’, biggest complaint with regards to the MA and MO for leafy vegetable crops is that there is no mechanism for forcing competitive pressure on […]
