Traceability: a market advantage

Mastronardi gets some love from CNN; from a Mastronardi news release:

International news agency CNN featured North American greenhouse tomato marketer Mastronardi Produce/SUNSET brand on Monday night during the Lou Dobbs Tonight show. With the focus of the produce industry centered around the Salmonella outbreak, CNN Correspondent Kitty Pilgrim, sitting in for Lou Dobbs, was quick to point out the key successes of Mastronardi’s traceability program.

“We ensure that we are able to track the fruit that we produce. We can walk into any store and pick up one of our Sunset labeled tomatoes and trace it back to the greenhouse where it was grown.” stated Paul Mastronardi, Executive Vice-President of Mastronardi Produce Ltd. Mastronardi’s has in place a fully comprehensive Food Safety Program that encompasses from farm to customer. Mastronardi was one of the first in the greenhouse industry to implement a robust traceability program that would require all produce packed under the Sunset label to contain the Product Origin as well as a Farm Code to trace back to which greenhouse it was grown in.

Ms. Pilgrim went on to praise Mastronardi Produce for their onsite laboratory as one of only a few in the industry. When Ms. Pilgrim asked Mr. Mastronardi how often were tests conducted on their vegetables, Mastronardi responded “daily”.