Translation station

I think you will like the Google translation feature I added to the Web site today. It allows the whole Web page to be translated to multiple languages. Just click on the box with the flags on the right side of the blog and see what this feature can do.

Coming up

Robert Guenther of United reports that the Senate's Specialty Crop Competitiveness Act may be introduced Thursday by Sens. Larry Craig and Debbie Stabenow, with perhaps 12 and 15 co-sponsors in tow.

While funding levels are somewhat different, Guenther said the bill is still being called a companion bill to the House of Representative's EAT Healthy America Act introduced earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Guenther said that the Senate Agriculture Committee is expected to hold a hearing that will cover specialty crops, organic agriculture and other topics on Tuesday, April 24.

There also is a hearing on organic farming issues tomorrow by the House ag subcommittee on horticulture and organic agriculture, Here are the details.



Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture Hearing to review economic impacts of organic production, processing, and marketing or organic agricultural products
April 18, 2007
10:00 a.m.
1300 Longworth House Office Building
WITNESS LIST

Panel I
Ms. Caren Wilcox, Executive Director, Organic Trade Association, Greenfield, Massachusetts
Mr. Robert B. Marqusee, Director, Department of Rural Economic Development, Woodbury County, Sioux City, Iowa
Ms. Bea James, Category Leadership Program Manager, National Cooperative Grocers Association, St. Paul Minnesota
Mr. Mark Lipson, Policy Program Director, Organic Farming Research Foundation, Santa Cruz, California

Panel II
Mr. Manuel Vieriera, A.V. Thomas Produce, Livingston, California
Ms. Mary-Howell R. Martens, Lakeview Organic Grains, Penn Yan, New York
Mr. Scott Lively, President and CEO, Dakota Beef, LLC, Howard, South Dakota
Mr. Robert Pike, Vice President/General Manager, Braswell Foods/Glenwood Foods, Nashville, North Carolina
Panel III
Ms. Sandra Marquardt, President, On the Mark Public Relations, Silver Spring, Maryland, on behalf of Ms. La Rhea Pepper, Chief Executive Officer, Organic Essentials, Inc., O'Donnell, Texas
Mr. Lynn Clarkson, President, Clarkson Grain Company, Inc., Cerro Gordo, Illinois
Mr. Rich Ghilarducci, President and CEO, Humboldt Creamery, Fortuna, California
Ms. Nicole Bernard-Dawes, President and COO, Late July Snacks, Hyannis, Massachusetts

Necessary next step

I just got off the phone with Donna Garren of the National Restaurant Association. We talked about the association's positions relative to produce safety. In short, the NRA is supportive of what California leafy greens handlers and Florida tomato growers are doing to institute state programs to implement food safety standards.

However, Garren said that won't be good enough in the long term. The NRA is looking for FDA regulation of fresh produce, notably HACCP-oriented regulations accompanied with FDA authority to enforce them. She said the "seafood model" of HACCP regulation is what she has in mind for the fresh produce industry.

"We need to see more federal oversight from the FDA and we will work with Congress and the produce industry to pursue regulations as a necessary step," she said.

Unlike her old boss Tom Stenzel at United, Garren doesn't feel FDA guidance is enough oversight. "While FDA on many occasions has said the fastest way to pursue change is (through guidance), I think the time has come that we need to take the necessary time and Congress needs to invest the necessary dollars to encourage regulation."

TK: Garren's "necessary next step" of FDA regulation is not that far removed from that United has asked for - and Stenzel and indicated the industry would consider the seafood model as the food safety discussion continues - but the spectre of broad FDA regulation over all produce items may be more than the industry has bargained for.

Wal Mart and Organics

The furor over the Business Week article about Wal-Mart's supposed "backing off" on organics continues amid heavy follow up coverage. The Packer's Pamela Riemenschneider (Pamela thankfully breaks email style and goes with PamelaR@thepacker.com ) has been covering this story and notes that the BW article has been criticized because of its limited source base. I have noted in earlier posts on Fresh Talk that Wal-Mart's market positioning has teetered back and forth as it attempts to gain purchases from more affluent consumers and at the same time be true to its Every Day Low Prices roots. How is that process changing how Wal-Mart sees its future with organic produce?

Pamela passed on this letter Wal-Mart wrote in response to the BW piece:


April 13, 2007
Dear Editor,
Pallavi Gogoi’s article, posted April 12, 2007, on Businessweek.com, is an erroneous and inaccurate representation of Wal-Mart’s commitment to providing our customers with affordable access to organic products. We have been selling organic products in our Supercenters and Neighborhood Markets for many years and, due to customer demand, announced plans to double the organic food offerings in those locations in March of 2006. We quickly met that goal and even exceeded it in communities where there is an exceptionally high demand for organic offerings. We continue to see steady customer interest in buying quality organics at great prices. We realize that the customer base in each of our communities is unique, so we tailor the assortment in each of our stores to meet our customers’ needs. This is part of our long-standing “store of the community” philosophy of matching the mix of merchandise with the customer base and demand in each specific community. At a Bear Stearns investors conference on March 8, 2006, Wal-Mart executive Stephen Quinn announced, “We’re soon going to have over 400 SKUs (stock keeping units) of both fresh and brand name superior organic foods available at the Wal-Mart price.” Today we’re proud to offer significantly more than that company-wide, which is completely in line with our plans. This enables specific locations to customize their assortment of organics to fit the consumers in their community. This simply makes good business sense. We’ve used this same philosophy of tailoring our merchandise mix for each store for various categories for more than 10 years. As a company that’s always working to provide our customers with the best products at the best value, we determine what we’ll buy based on ongoing assessments of quality, price, customer feedback and other factors. Organic apples are one of the top selling organic produce items at Wal-Mart, along with carrots, citrus, lettuce and packaged salads. Far from “backing off,” sales for Wal-Mart’s organic produce for 2006 were at a growth rate well above the industry average of 13.7 percent, based on data from the Organic Trade Association. Bottom line, Wal-Mart’s growth in the organics category will continue to be reflective of the demand and we will continue providing our customers with the organic products they desire at low prices.
Sincerely,
Karen Burk
Wal-Mart Corporate Communications

Harmonic convergence

I had a chance to visit with Bryan Silbermann of PMA and Tom Stenzel of United yesterday about their testimony before the FDA panel. More on that later and in The Packer's news coverage.

Bryan noted that PMA's board will meet later this month and consider if it should stake out the same position that United has relative to the request for strong federal oversight(regulation) of food safety. Of course, so much of the debate now is semantics - FDA's issuance of guidance GAPs is seen as a type of mandate, if you will, by Stenzel and the United Board. In the end, PMA and United must be on the same page on this important issue, and I expect they will.

An indictment

Here is more coverage of the FDA hearing on produce safety from the point of view of the trucker:

By: Adam LedlowGRAIN VALLEY, Mo. -- The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) outlined key issues facing the safe transport of fresh produce for the US Food & Drug Administration during a public hearing in College Park, Md. last week. OOIDA regulatory affairs specialist, Joe Rajkovacz, testified on the significance of unregulated practices in the transportation industry and how unsanitary conditions affect the safety of fresh produce."Best practices have been well known for many years, but economic considerations by shippers and receivers have trumped any meaningful implementation," he said.During his testimony, Rajkovacz referred to the Mar. 25 episode of Dateline NBC which exposed poor sanitary conditions at a wholesale produce market in Los Angeles. "This story was not shocking to most produce truckers," Rajkovacz noted in his testimony. "We've been forced to live with filthy conditions in this industry for decades." Rajkovacz said specific issues relating to the handling and shipping fresh produce include a lack of sanitary bathroom facilities, as well as unsanitary “pallet exchange.”The FDA heard that – in order to be loaded – truckers are often forced to procure pallets from a pallet yard to exchange with a shipper, and that it is not unusual for pallets to be stained with animal blood, residue from chemical shipments or bird and rodent droppings. Rajkovacz said product recalls, like last year’s outbreak of E.coli in spinach, have had a negative impact on the industry that has been essentially overlooked by the industry. The recall left many small-business produce truckers with large financial losses as they faced the responsibility of disposing of rejected product. OOIDA officials say it is a common industry practice for shippers and receivers to evade financial responsibility by leaving truckers "holding the bag" when dealing with recalled product."We are their dumping ground," said Rajkovacz, who was a produce hauler for more than 20 years before joining the OOIDA full-time in 2006.


TK: Again, the industry is apparently reaping the wrath of past mistreatment of truckers.