Finding Humor In Harmonization
A hat tip to Robert Stovicek, PhD, President of Primus Labs, for sending along the following wry cartoon from xkcd, A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. We have to confess that though we understand and appreciate the desire of growers and packers to see one standard and one audit, we suspect that […]
Food Safety, Recalls And Why Consumers Don’t Always Need Notification
Phyllis Entis, a food safety microbiologist, aka the “bug lady,” runs the eFoodAlert blog and recently ran a piece titled, 114 Tons of Spinach Recalled by Stealth: Thanks to FDA’s weekly Enforcement Report summary, another stealth recall has just seen the light of day. Leading the list of Class 1 Food recalls in the Enforcement Report […]
Pundit’s Mailbag — Newt Gingrich To Mars?
Our piece, Mars Space Mission Has Many Opportunities For Produce And Packaging Innovations, brought a jesting objection from a produce industry luminary: Your lead for the story about the Mars mission was a classic tease: you start by invoking Newt Gingrich to capture the reader’s attention but nowhere do you say when Newt is offering […]
Demanding Leadership, In Business And Government
We’ve often dealt with the subject of leadership, and our expectations in that area define whether our companies and our industry will advance. The same issues vex our country. We recently wrote a piece for The Weekly Standard that looked to a column written by Joe Nocera for The New York Times as illuminating a surprising […]
Pundit’s Mailbag — Hard Work, Depression And The Produce Industry
Our piece, Are You Depressed From Working Too Hard Or Working Too Hard Because You Are Depressed? brought some interesting comment regarding its application to the produce industry, including this note: Read with interest your recent post regarding long hours and depression. In both my industry (marketing, agency) and our clients’ (produce), we are noted for […]
Organics, Crop Yields And Feeding The World
Media and public-policy types often get caught up in the buzz over organics, and the produce industry is mostly willing to oblige. The reason: Organic is not only a great brand but the rule regarding organic — specifically the requirement for a three-year transition before land used conventionally can produce crops that can be labeled […]
Business Strategies Don’t Often Translate In Politics
We’ve had a few occasions to mention Jack Welch here at the Pundit. You can see those pieces here, here, here and here. He is the former CEO of General Electric and, with his wife, Suzy Welch, who is the former editor of the Harvard Business Review, the two have launched a new column for […]
Mars Space Mission Has Many Opportunities For Produce And Packaging Innovation
Newt Gingrich has proposed a moon base by 2020, but the real goal is getting to Mars. To a large extent, Newt Gingrich’s plans have been unfairly parodied by both his Republican competitors and the media. The truth is that Mr. Gingrich is on record as looking to make these things happen, not through a statist approach […]
Pundit’s Mailbag — Closer Look At Auditing Process May Require Rationale For Each Component Of The Audit
Our piece, Auditing and Food Safety, brought this note from a longtime Pundit contributor: In your Pundit 1/4/12 article, ‘Auditing and Food Safety,’ the word ‘transparency’ is used to refer to the rapid communication of producer audit failures, low scores, and comments, to the buyer. Shouldn’t the word ‘transparency’ also include the rationale behind the […]
Are You Depressed From Working Too Hard Or Working Too Hard Because You Are Depressed?
In this industry filled with long hours, it seems that many would be interested in this piece from The New York Times health blog called “Well” that tries to answer a question as to the relationship between work hours and depression. The piece is titled, Really? The Claim: Long Work Hours Can Cause Depression: Routinely […]
