Fresh Produce Discussion Blog

Created by The Packer's National Editor Tom Karst

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Focus on facilitating trade

I'm not sure what's news here, but it may be worth noting that CBP is trying to be more sensitive to trade issues. Just slid across the inbox from CBP:


U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner W. Ralph Basham today announced the publication of the CBP Trade Strategy at the annual CBP Trade Symposium in Washington, D.C. The trade strategy is the first published document that explains how CBP will accomplish its mission of facilitating legitimate trade.

The CBP Trade Strategy covers the next five years, when the volume of imports and the complexity of trade laws are expected to grow. In fiscal year 2008, CBP processed imports worth $2.2 trillion and collected $32 billion in revenue.

The four major goals of the trade strategy are to:

· facilitate legitimate trade and ensure compliance;

· enforce U.S. trade laws and collect accurate revenue;

· advance national and economic security; and

· intensify modernization of CBP’s trade processes.

The Trade Strategy reflects CBP’s layered approach to trade facilitation and enforcement, which expands pre-entry and post-release compliance verification programs to reduce unnecessary delays for legitimate imports at the borders.

For more information on CBP’s Trade Strategy, please log on to http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/trade/.


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USDA ERS Fruit and Tree Nut Yearbook - 2008

Thankfully, these government reports no longer come to our office in the mail. This annual report is packed with 200 pages of data about fruit and tree nuts, and you probably will find something in the report useful to you if you grow, pack, import, export, sell or eat fruit. Find the 2008 USDA ERS Fruit and Tree Nut Yearbook here.

Here is a bit about fresh fruit consumption in 2007:

Per capita fresh fruit consumption averaged 97.5 pounds in 2007, 4 percent below the previous year (table f-36). Americans ate about the same amount of fresh noncitrus fruit between 2006 and 2007, but 16 percent less citrus due to smaller citrus crops in California, which produces most of the fresh oranges and lemons. Noncitrus fruit consumption veraged 79.5 pounds per person in 2007, the fourth highest on record. Strong demand for bananas and grapes, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cherries, apricots, and papayas helped offset weakened demand for fresh apples, peaches and nectarines, pears, kiwifruit, plums/prunes, pineapples, and avocados. Mango consumption remained unchanged from 2006 at 2.10 pounds per person, tying for the record high.

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Roubini on the Hill: the rut of recession

Nouriel Roubini and other economic pundits testified before the Joint Economic Committee on Capitol Hill today. An excerpt from his prepared remarks, where he says the market hasn't responded all that well to the government's moves so far:


The hope that economic contraction in the US and other advanced economies would be short and shallow — a V-shaped six-month recession — has been replaced by certainty that this will be a long and protracted U-shaped recession, possibly lasting at least two years in the US and close to two years in most of the rest of the world. And, given the rising risk of a global systemic financial meltdown, the prospect of a decade-long L-shaped recession — like the one experienced by Japan after the collapse of its real estate and equity bubble — cannot be ruled out.

Indeed, the growing disconnect between increasingly aggressive policy actions and strains in the financial market is scary. When Bear Stearns’ creditors were bailed out to the tune of US$30 billion in March, the rally in equity, money and credit markets lasted eight weeks. When the US Treasury announced a bailout of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in July, the rally lasted just four weeks. When the US$200 billion rescue of these firms was undertaken and their US$6 trillion in liabilities taken over by the US government, the rally lasted one day.
Until the recent US and European measures were announced, there were no rallies at all. When AIG was bailed out to the tune of US$85 billion, the market fell 5 percent. Then, when the US$700 billion US rescue package was approved, markets fell another 7 percent in two days. As authorities in the US and abroad took ever more radical policy steps in the last few weeks, stock, credit and money markets fell further, day after day for most days. Even the rally following the G7 statement and radical policy actions taken to back stop the financial system lasted only one day and was followed by two weeks of sharply falling equity prices and rising CDS and credit spreads. Policy authorities seem to have lost their credibility in financial markets as - until recently – their actions were step by step, ad hoc and without a comprehensive crisis resolution plan.

TK: Roubini argues for mortgage relief to help households find more disposable income and big injections of federal money in infrastructure projects to soften the "hard landing" the U.S. will feel from the recession. Bottom line, produce marketers and retailers better be prepared to hone their value message in the months ahead.

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PMA poster - International Paper


Shirley Chapman, artist, shows off the 2008 PMA poster on the show floor on Oct. 26.

Next time you attend a PMA, make sure you stop by the International Paper booth for the official show poster. Chapman, based in Fremont, Calif., is an artist who has designed the PMA poster for the past six years, and I visited with her about the process. She says the acrylic painting that is the basis for the poster takes about 100 hours to create. The posters look a little like the old fruit labels, and Chapman said that is the look she likes to create for the collector item posters.

"There have people who have been collecting since way before I started," she said. This year, about 3,000 posters were printed, and typical runs are between 4,000 and 5,000. Chapman numbers and signs all the posters while she is at the show, and she said she has been told the posters are hung up in offices all around the world.

The
PMA official poster has been a part of the show for about 18 years.

The PMA board of directors doesn't get to see the poster until the week before the show, she said. Roger Rasor, Manager of Graphics and Advertising for International Paper, this year presented posters to the PMA chairman for 2008 and the convention chair at an International Paper-sponsored dinner Thursday before Fresh Summit.

In the bag of stuff taken home from PMA, the official show poster should always be accounted for.





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Tale of the tape - economy in reverse

The U.S. economy is shrinking, and it probably won't be the last quarter that the GDP numbers are in reverse gear. Here is the link. Real gross domestic product - the output of goods and services produced by labor and property in the U.S. dropped by 0.3% in the third quarter, compared with a 2.8% increase in the second quarter.

The Commerce Department said real personal consumption expenditures decreased 3.1% in the third quarter, compared with a an increase of 1.2% in the second quarter. Durable goods decreased 14.1%, compared with a 2.8% decrease in the second. Nondurable goods decreased 6.4, compared with a second quarter increase of 3.9%.

Dissecting that nondurable goods expenditure further, the Commerce Department noted that consumer expenditures on food dropped a whopping 8.6% in the third quarter, compared with a gain of 4.1% in the second quarter and a gain of 1.3% in the first quarter. By comparison, expenditures on clothing and shoes were down 11% and auto sales dropped 25%.

TK: People gotta eat, yes. But these numbers on the reduction of food purchases in the third quarter are scary; it will be revealing to see if these numbers are reflected in United's Fresh Facts third quarter retail report.....

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Poll closed - Facebook generation wins

The recent Fresh Talk poll queried readers about their participation in social/business networking Web sites. Here is the question and the results:


What social business networking sites are you a member of?
Facebook
7 (53%)
Linkedin
5 (38%)
Plaxo
3 (23%)
None of the above
3 (23%)


Votes so far: 13
Poll closed


TK: About a quarter of our readers voting indicated they were not members of any of the options. For those of you not on linkedin.com, I would commend its value and organization. Also you would likely benefit from joining the Fresh Produce Industry Discussion Group, both on the discussion board and at linkedin.

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EU Commission - comment on voluntary third party certification

Just saw this comment on the federal docket from the EU about the FDA draft guidance on voluntary third party certification program. It is telling when the uber-regulated European Commission worries that the FDA plan is overly prescriptive. The EU is also concerned the FDA guidance discriminates in favor of domestic facilities. I pulled a few excerpts from the document below:

Based on the view that the food safety provisions of the European Union and the United States both deliver a similarly high level of protection, the implementation of the Food Protection Plan provides an important opportunity to strengthen the collaboration between FDA and DG Health and Consumers (SANCO). We hope that the Plan will reduce administrative burdens for food businesses in transatlantic trade rather than creating additional red tape and cost in the absence of identified risks of EU food and feed products.

Accordingly, the European Commission stands prepared to actively support all reasonable measures which promote a high level of safety in a proportionate and non-discriminatory manner. However, the draft Guidance document falls regrettably short of this goal in several important ways. Would it be enforced in its current form and wording, very few European businesses - which are among the world’s best performing and most strongly controlled – would qualify for certification under the voluntary program as it is currently laid out in the draft Guidance document. This cannot be justified.

Non-discrimination – is there a level playing field?

First and foremost, the Guidance de facto applies to businesses in foreign countries rather than US domestic facilities, and it is, therefore, deeply discriminatory.

US domestic businesses, which decide not to voluntarily sign up to a third party certification program, would potentially face a higher frequency of FDA inspection – depending from resources. Given that all businesses have to comply with the US Food Law and assuming that most of these businesses indeed act lawfully, the incentive for US domestic facilities to seek third party certification is very limited.

In contrast, importers are confronted with the alternative of either seeking third party certification or accepting delays and detentions in entry clearance with each day costing thousands of dollars of cash value. Importers of regular shipments of high volumes of good will have little choice but to ‘voluntarily’ subscribe to the program and accept the higher cost of market entry. Likewise, importers of perishable goods will have to balance the cost of potential delays against the considerable cost of compliance – in contrast to US domestic producers. And many small businesses will find it impossible to shoulder the higher cost involved in either accepting lengthy detentions or signing up to certification procedures.

Nothing in the history of EU food exports to the United States justifies this discrimination and, given the extent of the financial and organizational interrelationships of transatlantic food industries, such a discrimination might have deleterious economical consequences for both sides.

Proportionality – what is the appropriate level of protection?

Second, the scope of the proposed, voluntary measures goes far beyond the legal requirements of basis provided by the Food Drugs and Cosmetics Act. Given that there is no legal basis to request, for example, HACCP-based self control systems from US domestic businesses (except fishery products and fruit juices), crisis management plans or traceability systems from the very source of each ingredient all the way to the customer, can it be justified that these requirements are imposed on EU exporters? If the appropriate level of protection of the United States is defined by the Food Drugs and Cosmetics Act, official, regulatory decisions (i.e. detention at the border) must be taken on this basis and not on conditions which go far beyond these legally defined levels of protection.

Later....

Implementation – what exactly should be certified?

In its current form, the draft guidance lists all possible food safety and food security requirements –employee training, suppliers management, security issues, HACCP-based self control systems, traceability, complaints, recall and crisis management – in the form of a general wish list, which may be applicable or desirable. But the draft guidance document gives no guidance, which measures would actually be warranted and justifiable for specific food business operations in specific regions on the basis of a rational and transparent risk analysis, taking into account inherent risk of the product and criteria of threat or vulnerability.

Without further third party certifiers will feel obliged to follow the very letter of the available, general guidance, rather than making rational and proportionate judgments based on risk. To enjoy the benefit of expedited border processing, businesses will tend to play along and implement measures with high incremental cost and very little safety or security gains.

The incremental benefits of such a ‘race to the top’ would be rather small. The disadvantages are clear: Consumers ultimately will have to compensate the cost in the form of higher prices; small businesses will be driven out of markets and reduce competition and innovation; the diversity of our food supply and our choices will diminish.

To allow businesses and certifiers to strive for optimal solutions, balancing safety, security and cost, and implementing official and third party controls, FDA has to define its appropriate level of protection for individual products. Only with a clearly defined target, businesses and certifiers will be able to identify the appropriate mix of measures to meet them.

Wolf Maier
Counselor Health, Food Safety, Consumer Affairs
Delegation of the European Commission
Washington, DC

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