E-Verify rules and exemptions

Industry leaders were worried in August about the implications of the executive order and June proposed rule that mandates E-Verify for federal contractors and subcontractors. Now with the final rule issued, some of those concerns are eased. Look for coverage in The Packer about the what the USDA AMS says about E-Verify exemptions and the federal feeding programs. And what about the DOD Fresh program? Developing.....

B & C - Costa Rica

Alberto Bonilla, director of sales for Costa Rica based B & C Exportadores examines chayote at the company's farm. During peak season from November to February, the firm exports about 20 containers of chayote and tubers weekly from Costa Rica to global markets, with about 80% bound for the U.S. Following is a slide show that features Alberto and also his sister Laura Bonilla.

Produce Promotions - November 19 - Nov. 26

Fresh or frozen turkey? Either way, consumers are primed for savings this week. Here is another round of food ads from the suburban Kansas City region. A taste of Thanksgiving week (Nov. 19 to Nov. 26 ) promos...

Wal-Mart
Fresh turkey: $1.18/lb
No produce in ad

Hen House
Fresh "oven ready" turkey: $1.49/lb
Red raspberries, blackberries or blueberries; 2 for $5 (4.4 oz. to 6 oz.)
3-lb bag sweet potatoes: 2 for $3
Mann's Sweet potato cubes or fries: 2 for $5
Green Giant Pascal celery: 69 cents each
Celery hearts: 2 for $4
Sun World large size Scarlotta seedless grapes: $1.99/lb
Peru asparagus: $.2.49/lb
Honeycrisp apples: $2.49/lb
3-lb bag seedless Cutie clementine tangerines: $4.99/each
Regal Comice pears: $2.49/lb
Dole Golden jumbo pineapple: $3.99 each
Late Howell variety cranberries: 2 for $4


Price Chopper
Frozen turkey: 88 cents/lb
Fresh celery: 49 cents/each
Louisiana sweet potatoes: 49 cents/lb
Fresh green asparagus: $1.99/lb
Cutie clementines 3-lb bag: $3.99 each
Earthbound Farm spring mix or spinach mix: 1 lb: $5.99
Dole jumbo pineapple: $3.99 each
Scarlotta red seedless grapes: $1.99/lb
Ocean Spray cranberries: 2 for $4
Green Giat Klondike Rose or Yellow Gold Dust potatoes: two 3-lb bags for $5
Bartlett or Bosc pears: 41.29/lb
Butternut squash: 79 cents/lb
Green Giant sliced white or baby portabella mushrooms (8 oz) : 2 for $4


HyVee
Frozen turkey: 79 cents/lb
Washington honeycrisp apples: $1.88/lb
Ocean Spray cranberries: $1.48/12 oz. bag
Clementines: 5-lb box: $6.99
Disney Garden fancy navel oranges: .77/lb
Mountain King Butter Gold potatoes: $2.68/5-lb bag
Dole Premium classic salad mix: 2 for $3

Food Security in the U.S. - ERS report

A new USDA Economic Research Service report considers Household Food Security in the U.S. Among the surprising finding; of those who are food insecure (my translation: hungry ) only about half participate in any federal food nutrition program. From the summary:

In 2007, 88.9 percent of U.S. households were food secure throughout the year, a level that was essentially unchanged from 2005 (89.0 percent) and 2006 (89.1 percent). Food-secure households had consistent access to enough food for active healthy lives for all household members at all times during the year. The remaining 11.1 percent (13 million households) were food insecure. These households, at some time during the year, had difficulty providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources. About one-third of food-insecure households (4.7 million, or 4.1 percent of all U.S. households) had very low food security, essentially unchanged from 2005 (3.9 percent) and 2006 (4.0 percent). In households with very low food security, the food intake of some household members was reduced and their normal eating patterns disrupted because of the household’s food insecurity. The other two-thirds of food-insecure households obtained enough food to avoid substantial disruptions in eating patterns and food intake, using a variety of coping strategies, such as eating less varied diets, participating in Federal food and nutrition assistance programs, or obtaining emergency food from community food pantries or emergency kitchens. Even when resources are inadequate to provide food for the entire family, children are usually shielded from the disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake that characterize very lowfood security. However, children as well as adults xperienced instances of very low food security in 323,000 households (0.8 percent of households with children) in 2007, up from 221,000 households (0.6 percent of households with children) in 2006. On a given day, the number of households with very low food security was a small fraction of the number that experienced this condition “at some time during the year.” On average, households classified as having very low food security experienced the condition in 7 months of the year, for a few days in each of those months. On an average day in November 2007, for example, an estimated 609,000 to 941,000 households (0.5-0.8 percent of all U.S. households) had members who experienced very low food security, and children experienced these conditions in 45,000 to 65,000 households (0.11 to 0.17 percent of all U.S. households with children). The prevalence of food insecurity varied considerably among different types of households. Rates of food insecurity were substantially higher than the national average for households with incomes near or below the Federal poverty line, households with children headed by single women, and Black and Hispanic households. Geographically, food insecurity was more common in large cities and rural areas and, regionally, more prevalent in the South than in the Northeast and Midwest.
Food-secure households spent more for food than food-insecure households. In 2007, the median U.S. household spent $42.50 per person for food each week—about 20 percent more than the cost of USDA’s Thrifty Food Plan (a low-cost food “market basket” that meets dietary standards, taking into account household size and the age and gender of household members). The median food-secure household spent 24 percent more than the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan, while the median food-insecure household spent 8 percent less than the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan. Some food-insecure households turn to Federal food and nutrition assistance programs or emergency food providers in their communities when they are unable to obtain enough food. Just over half of the food-insecure households surveyed in 2007 said that in the previous month they had participated in one or more of the three largest Federal food and nutrition assistance programs—the National School Lunch Program, the Food Stamp Program, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). About 21 percent of food-insecure households obtained emergency food from a food pantry at some time during the year, and 2.7 percent ate one or more meals at an emergency kitchen in their community.

Corporacion Horticola - Costa Rica

Here are shots from Corporacion Horticola in Cartago, Costa Rica.I'll expand this post last as I transcribe more of my interview with company officials.

Corporacion Horticola - Costa Rica

My second visit on Nov. 12 was to the offices of Cartago, Costa Rica- based Corporacion Horticola. Here is a powerpoint presented by company officials about their operation. I will also put up a slideshow revealing and further report about their research into greenhouse tomato production....

Headline roundup - Nov. 18

More on e-verify, immigration and economy..found on the World Wide Web this morning:


Half of world faces water shortage by 2080 because of global warming From the IHT:
Wong said the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that as many as 2 billion people won't have sufficient access to clean water by 2050. That figure is expected to rise to 3.2 billion by 2080 — nearly tripling the number who now do without it.

Anti-salmonella effort lacked coordination, report says From Bloomberg in Salt Lake Tribune

The report called for an examination of how quickly information was shared among local, state and federal officials, and whether they fully disclosed relevant information to one another. The outbreak shows the need for safety standards, which can be created by the Food and Drug Administration, according to the report.

Economists say recession is here and will last

The consensus among economists surveyed by the Fed is that the country entered the recession in April, that it will last 14 months and would drive the U.S. unemployment rate, now 6.6 percent, to 7.6 percent by the third quarter of 2009.

Final rule on e-verify said to burden contractors

Under the new rule, which goes into effect Jan. 15, the government estimates that 168,000 employers will have to screen 3.8 million employees in 2009, up from the 70,000 employers using the system this year.

Contractors are worried that E-Verify is not ready to handle a huge volume of activity and may result in people being laid off or contracts being delayed until the system can manage the larger volumes, said Trey Hodgkins, vice president of federal government programs for the Information Technology Association of America.



Thanksgiving feast gobbling up more food dollars

“Thanksgiving food prices are up about 6 percent compared to last year,” Alexander said. “What’s interesting is the difference between grocery store prices compared to restaurant prices. Grocery store prices are increasing at a pace of 7.6 percent, compared to a pace of 4.5 percent for restaurants.”


Europe relaxes rule on fresh produce imports

Fresh produce exporters have an opportunity to boost their deliveries to the key EU market, which has relaxed its marketing standard rules on fruits and vegetables to improve trade.

In what is now dubbed “the return of the curvy cucumber” the EU said it had repealed specific marketing standards for 26 types of fruits and vegetables as part of efforts to cut down on red tape in trade.


Making healthy choices in local schools

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program provides students at Bennington Elementary School with a healthy snack once a week. Carol Adinolfi, the program's director, said it is about teaching students through their senses.

"Rather than being told, students are experiencing it for themselves," she said Wednesday. " ... It's about exposing them to fruits and vegetables they've never had. Recently, we had a pear tasting, which started getting students thinking about the enjoyment of food, the delectability."

Texas legislature to consider immigration bills

The proposals go well beyond the usual proposals to require ID to vote or requiring citizenship to get a driver's license.One would require public schools to check the citizenship of their students. Another would require illegal immigrants to live in self-described "sanctuary cities."Author Leo Berman, R-Tyler, said he filed it mainly to make a point to cities that describe themselves as "sanctuaries," or havens for illegal immigrants. "The federal government is requiring us to give free education and health care to illegals," Mr. Berman said. "It's the largest unfunded mandate in the history of our nation."

Rewind: WPPC-FDA meeting Sept. 11 - Marjorie Davidson on communications

More from the WPPC-FDA meeting of Sept. 11 - Part 8, if you are counting at home. These comments wrap up the FDA panel's address to the WPPC. These remarks are given by Marjorie Davidson, communications specialist at FDA, concerning communications with industry and consumers during the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak of 2008.


Marjorie Davidson: I have been asked to go over a few points on communications during this recent outbreak, I’d like to preface this by saying we communicate with other federal agencies, state and local governments and within FDA. My focus is concerning the agency’s communication with industry during the outbreak, as well as communications with consumers.
First communications with industry; we learned from our lessons learned” from the spinach as well as when the FDA participated in USDA sponsored stakeholder conference earlier this year, and the message coming from the industry was loud and clear, they wanted to be alerted right away when an incident occurred and an issue was arising and wanted to be kept advised of the progress of the investigation as it progressed through an outbreak.
So during our Saintpaul outbreak, we called trade associations and industry and met with them regularly on conference calls. We called them first very much earlier than we did in the spinach outbreak as soon as we had an implicated vehicle. Then subsequently we held regular conference calls with the associations to keep them apprised of what was going in the investigation as it went forward. At times, were asked to meet more frequently than we had scheduled and we arranged them as much as humanly possible to make sure we continually kept our communications open. Industry industry(associations) was invited to participate in a listen only mode to media press briefings so they could be kept aware of what kind of issues the media was interested in as soon as we heard about them as well.
To be effective, communication needs to be two ways, and not only did we pass information on (to the industry) we needed to hear back from the industry as well. We asked throughout this outbreak industry to provide information about distribution patterns, harvesting, and seasonality. We got information back rapidly and concisely and it at was very, very helpful to help us target the investigations and focus our resources.
Right now the agency is developing a comprehensive plan from the “lessons learned” from this outbreak to address communications with industry and you will be hearing about this in the near future. We are interested in getting feedback from you on how the communication worked and what we can do to prepare best for next time.
Communications and consumers; our first consumers is to get accurate information out to the general public as quickly as we can in order to protect public health. At the same time, we don’t’ want to unnecessarily limit consumer access to nutritious produce, in this case. So as a result, we attempted to narrow the warnings early by putting an exclusionary list up. We wanted to indicate geographic areas where produce was being grown that wasn’t implicated in this outbreak. This was a very resource intensive activity but we wanted the market to stay open – the ones that weren’t implicated. This was our rationale in developing the list and we are reviewing our thinking about this and will be interested in talking with you all as we go forward with our plans. Another thing we learned from spinach (and communications with consumers during that outbreak) is that our internal daily deliberation process often caused to get information out too late and we missed the nightly news deadlines.
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As a result of this, we held press briefings earlier in the day. Another issue that developed during spinach was that CDC and FDA were issuing separate press releases so it made it quite challenging to make sure our messages were the same and there wasn’t confusion with the public. So we held press briefings in cooperation with CDC. This was particularly helpful in keeping our messages similar between federal agencies but also to further explain what was really a complicated message in this particular outbreak. It gave us a dialogue with the media and were able to clarify things quickly.
The Web was also a critical part of communications during the outbreak and it was complicated by the fact we were doing massive renovation of our Web site ad it hit right in the middle of that occurring. We were able through use of the Web to get much more detailed information different (audiences) for difference concerns. We were able to get much more specific information out that way. We also realize we need to have available to us more graphics and other visual aids to help visually represent was what is going on to consumers and other stakeholders looking at the Web.
Another lesson learned from spinach was consumers didn’t know when the outbreak was over;. Many of them still thought (during the spinach outbreak) it was ongoing when it was for all practically purposes stopped. So during this particular outbreak, on two separate occasions, first after tomatoes and after for peppers, we had press briefing and announced with great finality that consumers could return to enjoying produce and that FDA believed that there was no implicated product still out in the market place.
I’d like to add a final note on communications. FDA – as well as they are doing with communications with industry - FDA is doing an extensive analysis of is communications with consumers over these next few months. We are going to particularly focusing on our ability to use new technology to get information to the public as well as to other stakeholders. We are also going to be conducting research to explore how messaging, to try to understand better how it is received by consumers in the market place and how we can work better frame and identify our messages.
Jack Guzewich: We can think the panel for their overviews, now we can open the floor for discussion and for questions and answers...



TK: From Marjorie's comments, it seems to me the agency was fairly accommodating with the industry during the salmonella outbreak investigation. As you will see in the Q and A, a good portion of the industry's frustrations lie with the CDC and federal laws that prohibit sharing of specific information about an outbreak with industry. Next up (all in good time, my friends) a transcript of the question and answer session from the WPPC-FDA meeting of Sept. 11.