E. coli report

Here is the link that Doug Powell of the KSU Food Safety Network received from Seattle lawyer Bill Marler. The report from the "California Food Emergency Response Team (CalFERT).”details the traceback investigations and safeguards in place at implicated suppliers. The upshot: no E. coli found in the implicated lettuce fields, no smoking gun and plenty of questions still. And this troubling thought; could the E. coli could have come from ground beef rather than lettuce in the Taco Bell outreak?

Mindful eating? Move the fruit bowl closer

The author of "Mindless Eating: Why we eat more than we think" has been tabbed for the USDA role to oversee development of the 2010 dietary guidelines. Here is the release from the USDA:

DR. BRIAN WANSINK NAMED EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE USDA CENTER FOR NUTRITION POLICY AND PROMOTION
Washington, Nov. 19, 2007 -- Agriculture Under Secretary Nancy Johner for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services today announced the appointment of Dr. Brian Wansink as the Executive Director of the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP). Dr. Wansink currently serves as the John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing and the Director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab in the Department of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
"Dr. Wansink is nationally recognized in his field of nutrition research which focuses on how to encourage consumers to eat more nutritiously and better control how much they eat," said Johner. "Dr. Wansink's work has been featured in national print and broadcast media. We feel quite fortunate in having Dr. Wansink join our team here at the Department of Agriculture (USDA), and look forward to working with him."
At CNPP Dr. Wansink will be responsible for overseeing the planning, development and review of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the food pyramid known as MyPyramid.gov and programs including the Healthy Eating Index, the USDA Food Plans, the Nutrient Content of the U.S. Food Supply, and the cost of raising a child.
"I appreciate the opportunity to serve the President and the Secretary in this capacity," Wansink said. "The Center is involved in many crucial projects that have an immense potential to help the American public particularly in combating overweight and obesity. I look forward to leading these endeavors to the best of my abilities."
Dr. Wansink brings with him over 25 years of experience in nutritional science, food psychology, consumer behavior, food marketing, and grocery shopping behavior. His award-winning academic research on food has been published in the top marketing, medical, and nutrition journals nationally and internationally. His latest commercial publication, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, was released in 2006 and in paperback 2007.
Dr. Wansink has had academic appointments at Dartmouth College, Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, INSEAD at Fountainbleau France, US Army Research Labs, and Cornell University. He received a Ph.D. at Stanford University, 1990; M.S. at Drake University, 1984; and B.A. at Wayne State University, 1982.

TK: Here is Wansink's Web site on his book. Dig the last line in this article about Wansink's :"mindless eating" observations, as quoted in a USA Today article from October 2005:

Every day for four weeks, researchers put 30 Hershey's Kisses in either clear or opaque dishes for 40 secretaries. The dishes were placed in four different ways: On their desks and visible; on their desks but in containers with lids so the candy wasn't visible; about 6½ feet away and visible; the same distance but not visible.
Researchers kept a daily record of how many pieces of candy were eaten and refilled the bowls every evening. Findings:
• People ate almost eight candies a day when the bowl was on their desks and visible; they each ate about 4½ a day when it was on their desk but in a covered dish.
• They ate an average of about 5½ candies a day when the bowl was 6½ feet away and visible. And they ate slightly more than three candies a day when it was the same distance away and not visible.
"It was basically an 'out of sight, out of mind' demonstration," Wansink says. "The less visible and less convenient the candy, the less people thought about it and were tempted."
And, he adds, "another piece of advice might be to move the fruit bowl closer."

Commentary by Tom Nassif - WSJ Nov. 20

As passed on by Luis of the Fresh Produce Industry Discussion Group, here is a commentary from Tom Nassif, published in the Nov. 20 Wall Street Journal. Tom simply and eloquently puts the case to Congress for the courage to act on immigration reform.


COMMENTARY
Food for Thought
By TOM NASSIF
The Wall Street Journal
November 20, 2007; Page A19
In the midst of the combustive debate over immigration reform, we in agriculture have been forthright about the elephant in America's living room: Much of our workforce is in the country illegally -- as much as 70%.
Faced with the option of economic ruin, as hundreds of millions of dollars worth of our livelihood rots in the fields, or the embrace of a fatally flawed immigration system, our industry and farm families opt to survive. Who wouldn't? For those who have a 10-20 day harvest window to make or break their entire business year, government promises to fix the system don't work. We can't wait for rules to change. We need reform and we need it now.
Western Growers -- representing half of all the fresh fruits and vegetables grown in the U.S. -- has repeatedly called for a fix. We want and expect government to enforce immigration laws; we want a secure border, fraud-proof IDs and valid Social Security cards.
Despite a broken and unworkable system, however, Congress has chosen not to act. Meanwhile, the Bush administration and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) -- under intense political pressure -- did begin to move.
Last month, a federal judge ordered an indefinite delay to the DHS's "no-match" program that would have forced employers to fire workers whose Social Security numbers did not match their names. The judge said it would cause "irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers." This preliminary injunction has prevented the DHS from proceeding with the shortsighted no-match program.
The DHS openly concedes our industry's reliance on falsely documented workers. But like a physician who diagnoses an open wound but uses salt in place of sutures, DHS avoided the cure in favor of additional pain.
The pain was in the form of the no-match rules. The DHS guidelines would have established purported "safe harbor" procedures for employers who received a Social Security Administration (SSA) no-match letter. The letter notifies an employer that he has submitted employee W-2s with names and Social Security numbers that do not match.
Employers would have had to fire employees who could not produce new documentation within 90 days of receiving the letter, or face the risk that DHS may find that the employer had knowledge that the employee was unauthorized.
The regulations would have put farmers in an untenable situation:
Either terminate the majority of their existing workforce and let the crops die in the fields, or disregard the rules and risk having to pay huge fines and penalties for "knowingly" employing undocumented workers. This attempt by DHS to expose illegal immigrants would have done nothing to address the underlying issues or correct the problem.
Fortunately, the courts have stepped in and the Bush administration now has an opportunity to fix our broken system. The plaintiffs in the case argued that DHS's plans would place a costly burden on employers and result in the needless firing of employees. That, in turn, would open employers up to lawsuits and charges of discrimination. Civil liberties organizations pointed out the no-match rules would likely lead to the violation of the rights of many legal workers who might have made a mistake they couldn't correct before deadline.
These valid concerns must be addressed. Agriculture yearns for a legal, stable, economical workforce; we have been saying so for years.
And though we are relieved by the court's decision, it doesn't change the fact that this industry still needs a workable solution. Our current guest-worker program, known as H2-A, is costly and cumbersome, and sets labor standards that are not competitive in the global marketplace.
At the Bush administration's request, we have suggested changes to the H-2A program, such as expediting the application process and faxing guest-worker approval notices, instead of relying on "snail mail"while highly perishable crops await timely harvesters. These fixes are not difficult and can, in most cases, be administratively applied -- what is the delay?
If the DHS's no-match program had gone forward, America's domestic food supply would have been irreparably damaged. Small farm owners would have gone out of business and large operators could have taken their operations abroad -- taking hundreds of thousands of jobs with them.
Our industry, as well as farm-worker advocates -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- support legislation known as AgJOBS. This bill, which was a part of the Senate's "grand bargain," includes a temporary guest-worker program that logically matches willing farmers with willing foreign laborers.
AgJOBS provides the perfect opportunity for Congress to make progress on this critically important issue. Americans don't raise their children to work in the fields, and so we are reliant on a foreign workforce. We desperately want that workforce to be legal, and AgJOBS affords us that opportunity.
The Bush administration does support comprehensive immigration reform, and reportedly set in place the DHS's draconian no-match rules to force the issue. Still, it was playing a risky game of chance with U.S. agriculture to the detriment of our industry, our economy and American consumers.
We must stop playing games with our domestic food supply. Agriculture needs workers, Americans won't do the work and Congress lacks the courage to pass a comprehensive immigration package. It is time for Congress to find its courage, rise above the anger of the activists, and come together to solve this problem.

Mr. Nassif is president & CEO of Western Growers.