Honduras bound

I am taking off to Honduras bright and early Monday morning, so while I'm gone I hope to post some pics and comment on the itinerary. I'm in Nashville now, helping to move my son to town and begin his schooling at Belmont. Semi-long drive back to KC tomorrow...

By the way, I continue to appreciate Jay Martini's contribution to the blog. I hope all of you who know him in the industry take time to shoot him an email and give him a "thumbs way up."

As the good book says, many are called, but few choose.

A Big Bowl of Wrong

As the salmonella saintpaul investigation dragged the tomato industry kicking & screaming into its third month, we entered the theatre of the bizarre in our nation's capital.

The Thursday hearings by the House Agriculture Committee were enlightening, poisoning, mis-informative & important all at the same time. Admittedly, it was insufferingly boring & pedantic at times, but there was no question we were viewing high drama when Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), tomato in hand, lasered in on Dr. David Acheson of the FDA with these words:

"Why can't you clear tomatoes at this time?"

A pregnant pause ensued, then Acheson went into his patented doublespeak, blaming the CDC, the methodology, the geographical logistics, everything except Greenwich Mean Time for not coming up with the jalapeno/serrano pepper connection sooner.

In fact, in the same way that the FDA's planet-aligning breaking news regarding the peppers had come mere hours before Acheson's testimony Wednesday, I was half-expecting a messenger on horseback to break through the doors of the Rayburn building with up-to-the-minute findings to bail out his tail again.

For awhile during Thursday's hearing, Acheson was under the gun to the extent that I almost started to feel sorry for him. Almost. His forehead was full of these horizontal lines, and he looked like he was in the throes of Excedrin headache #459. But my temporary insanity & sympathy ended once and for all when Acheson spoke to reporters after the hearings.

(From AOL News) "I don't think we can say that (tomatoes) were needlessly dumped," Acheson told reporters after the hearing. "The early part of the investigation clearly implicated tomatoes."

'Don't think that they were needlessly dumped'. Think about that one for a minute. That singular statement means that, according to this guy, there was a need to destroy millions of dollars of pristine merchandise just because some flawed statistical analysis by some bureaucrat thousands of miles away thought it the right thing to do, for 'the public good'.

See, that's their out, Acheson's FDA & the CDC & any other government agency lacking the moral DNA to ever admit a mistake. That's always their out, in the same way that Richard Nixon condoned the Watergate coverup under the guise of national security. Without even a scent of responsibility-taking, they threw the industry under the bus as naturally as they breathe.

What these hearings needed was a real live wire, someone not familiar with Robert's Rules of Order, a pure produce guy who went through these weeks of hell on earth, who didn't sleep at night wondering how all this got out of his control. You know, someone possessing the kind of rabid passion that comes from not knowing if he'll have a job when the sun rises the next morning.

Then maybe Dr. Acheson wouldn't have been able to skate so freely after the hearings as he did.

Later,

Jay

Salmonella headline roundup - Wal-Mart gets sued

Why not a salmonella headline roundup? Let's have another go with Google and see what is being written about this never-ending story....

Jalapenos at Valley Bashas' test positive for salmonella

Bill Marler finds someone to sue in salmonella outbreak From the story:

This morning, Marler, joined by David Woodruff, a Colorado attorney, made his first move, filing a lawsuit against Wal-Mart and a John Doe jalapeño supplier on behalf of Brian Grubbs, a resident of Dolores, Colorado. The salmonella suit, which makes claims for, among other things, strict product liability, negligence and negligence per se, was filed in Colorado’s aptly-named Montezuma County court.

First salmonella lawsuit filed From the story:

"Mr. Grubbs became sick after eating jalapenos purchased from Wal-Mart," says Marler, "and it was the only thing he ate different from his wife." Fortunately, Mrs. Grubbs had the wherewithal to contact the local health department and insisted on getting the peppers tested. "She really pestered them to get the test done and now it has become a crucial piece of evidence," says Marler.

Marler explains that health departments are inundated with requests to test food and most of the time those requests are unfounded, mainly because people think the food that sickened them was the last food they ate. In this case, Marler says they got lucky: The Grubbs family still had some of the jalapenos that sickened Mr. Grubbs.


TK: Mr. Grubbs and the "smoking gun" pepper. One would assume Wal-Mart will fight this lawsuit with vigor. Here is a somewhat dated Marler Clark powerpoint...

Food Protection Plan

The FDA and its Food Protection Plan have been getting some ink this week. Here is sampling:

Produce problem: drawn out salmonella probe spurs calls for food safety revamp


That story by MarketWatch explores what Consumers Union wants for produce traceability:

• labels or marks on produce packages and the product itself that show country, facility, date and time where the item was first processed or shipped.
• labels for each lot to track progress through the food distribution system

TK: Not only the date but the time as well? On the product itself? Why not include the shipping point salesman and the retail buyer as well?

The story also notes FDA will hold a public hearing in the fall about improving traceability and a meeting in August about the food protection plan.

Here is the FDA's take on their progress with the Food Protection Plan. The press release notes that the FDA is "moving forward" to establish a presence in China and is also discussing terms of an FDA presence in India.
Also noted wa sthe FDA work on the multi-year Tomato Safety Initiative. From the release:


As part of the initiative, FDA has led assessments of grower practices focusing on the factors believed to be associated with contamination of tomatoes with Salmonella. FDA has conducted assessments in Virginia and began assessments in Florida in April.
FDA is exploring current existing third-party certification programs.

TK: On the intervention front, the FDA notes it is working with the University of New Mexico State University to develop a "prototype system for improving electronic screening, using open-source intelligence, of imported products offered for entry into the U.S."

Also on tap from FDA, the agency said it will conduct an additional 20,000 food import field exams in fiscal year 2009 above 2008 levels.


In that context, here is a Produce Marketing Association has comments about the FDA's Food Protection Plan at this link:

http://www.pma.com/issues/FoodProtectionPlanComments.cfm.

From PMA's news release:

Writing for PMA, Vice President of Government Relations and Public Affairs Kathy Means called for FDA to establish commodity-specific, risk-based food safety regulations for certain fresh produce items and supported the agency’s proposal that it act as a third-party auditor accreditor. The agency’s Food Protection Plan’s principles include focusing on risk throughout the product’s life cycle, targeting resources to maximize risk reduction, attending to both unintentional and intentional contamination, and using science based technology. The agency requested public comment on its plans in a Federal Register notice published April 2; comments were due by July 31.

Blogger unfrozen

I think the blog is back and running now. I had the day off today (Friday) but I found that I couldn't log on to this old familiar friend this morning. But the problem seems to have gone away and hopefully we will see no more technical difficulties for a while.

Meanwhile, checkout the National Fruit and Vegetable Retail Report here. From the Aug. 1 report:

Retailers Embrace, Highlight Local Produce
Retailers continued to entice customers with bountiful summer produce and many distinguished locally grown products in ads. Some even described the farm and published pictures of local growers. Throughout the store, retailers were using a variety of promotional tactics to attract business. These included “buy-one-get-one-free”, “buy-one-get-two-free”, 5 for $5, 10 for $10, double coupons, and rewards for gas and extra savings. There were also some scattered back-to-school features noted. Overall, fresh produce ad activity increased more than 10% this week and was a combination of increases of 8% in fruits and nearly 14% in vegetables. Fruits once again this week made up the top 5 featured items: peaches, grapes, nectarines, cherries, and cantaloupes. Stone fruits and melons were the most often featured fruits. Zucchini, tomatoes,green peppers and corn were the most often featured vegetables.In addition to the items reported, many other seasonal items were noted in features. These included: a variety of melons,kiwi, figs, white flesh peaches and nectarines, many fresh herbs, heirloom tomatoes, eggplants, yellow squash, and green onions.