Fresh Produce Discussion Blog

Created by The Packer's National Editor Tom Karst

Monday, August 31, 2009

Poll: how much produce isacquired with online bidding?

How much of fresh produce procured by food retailers is acquired by an online bidding process?
0 to 5%
3 (37%)
6% to 10%
1 (12%)
11% to 15%
0 (0%)
16% to 20%
1 (12%)
Have no idea
3 (37%)

Votes so far: 8
Poll closed

Sunday, August 30, 2009

New York Magazine: On your shopping list, traceability

http://nymag.com/guides/fallpreview/2009/restaurants/58520/

On Your Shopping List: Traceability
A handful of new grocery stores and services make transparency in sourcing their specialty.

By Robin Raisfeld & Rob Patronite


Over time, various words and phrases have entered the lexicon of conscious consumption: biodynamic, organic, natural, sustainable. And of course, the ever-popular and frequently exaggerated local and seasonal. The watchword this fall, as evidenced by a new crop of food shops and specialized purveyors, is “traceability,” as in the transparency of a food’s journey from farm (or factory) to fork. On a global scale, high-tech corporations invest millions in tracing protocols, mostly to stanch food-safety scares and eliminate fraud. But locally, and much more appetizingly, a handful of new retailers are launching shops and services that make it easier to know exactly what you’re eating, where it comes from, and, in many cases, the life stories of the folks who grow it.

1.Dickson’s Farmstand Meats
Jake Dickson, direct marketer turned boutique butcher, started out selling local meats at farmer’s markets, but next month, he unveils his Chelsea Market shop, where each cut will be labeled with not only the farm the animal came from but the breed and production method. This information doesn’t come easily at the supermarket or dinner table. Nor does supply-chain mileage (the distance an animal travels from farm to slaughterhouse to shop). Dickson’s cutoff is 400 miles, but most of his meat, including dry-aged grass- and grain-finished beef, is raised much closer. Because he buys whole animals and rotates his stock, the conscientious carnivore will have to make certain concessions: buying the whole chicken instead of single parts, for instance, and acclimating to less familiar cuts like flatiron and beef shin. For advice in that department, they can turn to resident chef Gabriel Ross, who’ll be making sausages and pâtés on-site. For Dickson, traceability means more than the code stamped on every label. “It’s building that relationship and trust.”
75 Ninth Ave., at 16th St. September; dicksonsfarmstand.com.

2. Litchfield Farms Organic & Natural CSF
Based on the CSA (community-supported agriculture) model, community-supported fisheries connect individual fishermen to consumers, cutting out the middleman to ensure a better price for the former and a continuous supply of fresh local seafood for the latter. Andrea Angera Jr., takes a modified approach in the program he’s spearheaded for his seafood-distribution company, Connecticut-based Litchfield Farms: He pays participating fishermen from Connecticut and Rhode Island a fixed per-pound price for their whole catch, roughly twice what they’d make at auction, then sells directly to subscribers in weekly ten-pound increments. And here’s the ecofriendly twist: By requiring compliance on fishing methods (hook and line only) and by specifying species (currently porgy, black bass, and mahimahi), Angera is able to curtail environmentally destructive techniques like trawling and encourage sustainable fishing. Manhattan deliveries are made Tuesdays and Fridays, and whole-fish per-pound pricing ranges from $4.75 to $6.75.
To enroll, call 860-483-7040, or write to info@litchfieldfarms.net.

3. The Meat Hook
Perhaps the prototypical new-wave butcher, Tom Mylan made meat both cool and politically correct at his butchering classes, on his blog, and most recently behind the counter at Marlow & Daughters. Next up: a new Williamsburg shop (its location, in the vicinity of Lorimer and Metropolitan, yet to be announced) with the noble mission of making local, sustainable high-quality meats accessible to all, namely in the populist forms of sausage, hot dogs, and hamburgers. There will also be family packs and “cow shares.”
Late October.

4. Basis Markets
The brainchild of former management consultant Bion Bartning, Basis is a newly formed company that recently acquired (and greatly expanded) Farm to Chef, a wholesale distributor connecting small local farms to haute New York kitchens. Late this fall, Bartning plans to open the first Basis Market, a 2,000-square-foot prototype grocery stocking the same farm-fresh produce, locally raised meats, and farmstead dairy that Basis supplies to places like Gramercy Tavern, Bklyn Larder, and Mas, as well as hot and cold prepared foods made from those stellar ingredients. “No Twinkies, no toilet paper,” says Bartning, who describes his wares as “traditional, localized, and 100 percent traceable”—and, since he’s taking a lower-than-average profit margin, affordable. In fact, although his first shop will occupy the former premises of a law office on the fringes of the meatpacking district, Bartning believes the concept will work everywhere from Princeton, New Jersey, to Bed-Stuy. “Traceability means provenance,” says Bartning. “I think it is the future.”
324 W. 14th St., nr. Eighth Ave. Late fall.

Our Fall Preview coverage continues throughout the Grub Street Network. Look for openings and trends in Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Labels:

College discourse over food safety, courtesy of Bill Marler

http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2009/aug/29/college-discourse-over-food-safety-comes-of/

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND — By Tristan Baurick

Bill Marler considers himself a “Coug — through and through.”

The Bainbridge Island resident earned three degrees at Washington State University, was the first student elected to the Pullman City Council and served on the WSU board of regents after making a worldwide name for himself battling E. coli outbreaks as a food safety lawyer.

So when his alma mater announced budget constraints would force it to cancel this year’s freshman reading program, which was to focus on a controversial food-related topic, Marler’s Cougar pride got the better of him — and his checkbook.

“They had already bought 4,000 copies of the book, so I’m just covering the rest,” he said.

The rest happens to be about $50,000.

But it’s worth it, Marler said, because the money revives WSU’s Common Reading program and puts copies of its 2009 selection — Michael Pollan’s biting critique of industrial agriculture, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” — into the hands of every freshman entering a university known for producing the best minds in agribusiness.

Along with the book comes a year’s worth of discussions and events, as well as a visit from the author in January. Marler is also bringing Pollan home with him for mid-January appearances on Bainbridge Island.

“The book has become for food what ‘Silent Spring’ was for DDT, and what ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ was for global warming,” Marler said. “It’s helping people focus their attention on what’s happening to them, and how things need to change.”

“The Omnivore’s Dilemma” pulls apart four meals, inspecting the ingredients’ social, political and environmental implications. The conclusion: people should eat food that is more a product of nature than industry.

A best-seller in 2006, the book was quickly adopted as a manifesto for the modern local food movement.

WSU’s selection of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” touched a nerve with some university leaders and key financial contributors — many of whom operate the kind of large-scale farming operations Pollan targets in the book.

The school stirred up even more controversy when it unceremoniously dropped the program in May.

A WSU English professor and Common Reading selection committee member asserted in a widely dispersed e-mail message that the program was canceled because of “political pressure” from a large farm owner and university regent who disliked the book’s characterization of industrial farming.

WSU President Elson Floyd dismissed the controversy as rumor-fueled, and stressed that the program was cut as part of a larger effort to shore up the university’s $54 million budget deficit.

Marler, who was a WSU regent from 1998 to 2004, was quick to come to WSU’s defense.

“To show that it was not political, I will pay to get Mr. Pollan to Pullman and find a place for him to speak,” he wrote in his blog, marlerblog.com, in May. I have my checkbook ready.”

WSU’s prompt acceptance of the $50,000 offer proved to Marler that the university’s concerns were purely budgetary.

“It was not politically motivated, but it was handled badly,” he said. “They didn’t see this as the potential pie in the face it became.”

For Marler, bringing back the program was a way for WSU to save face and ensure that the book got a fair hearing on campus.

“I may not agree with all of (Pollan’s) ideas, but I think they need to be talked about,” he said.

The main thrust of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” — that large-scale food production and distribution are harming human and environmental health — fits with what Marler has learned though almost two decades of helping sick people sue corporations over tainted food.

Marler began specializing in food contamination cases in 1993 when he represented a seriously ill survivor of Jack in the Box’s headline-grabbing E. coli outbreak. The $15.7 million settlement set a Washington state personal injury settlement record and led to several other cases against the fast food chain.

In 1998, Marler pulled $12 million out of Odwalla on behalf of three children made ill from the company’s E. coli-tainted apple juice.

Marler now travels several days a month to speak to food industry and public health groups. In May, he addressed Britain’s House of Lords. This week, he’s slated to speak at a food safety conference in Beijing.

He still handles a full plate of cases. One of his current clients is a 4-year-old girl who suffered a stroke from contaminated cookie dough.

“Unfortunately, I’ve gotten busier,” he said, noting recent outbreaks linked to spinach, lettuce and peanut butter.

He agrees with Pollan that smaller is usually safer.

“In my 17 years of litigation, I’ve never sued a farmers market,” he said. “It’s always been big corporations operating in multiple states, poisoning multiple people. That’s not to say that no one has ever gotten poisoned at the Bainbridge farmers market, but it hasn’t been serious. There is a link between mass-produced food and mass-produced illness.”

Where Marler questions Pollan is on how small-scale farming and localized distribution can feed the world’s growing population.

“I grew up on a farm near Silverdale, so I’m very familiar with small farms and raising animals,” he said. “How do you translate that to where you’re feeding 9 billion people?”

Marler hopes a flood of other questions about the ills of agribusiness and limitations of the local food movement will begin flowing as thousands of fellow Cougs crack open “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” as classes get under way.

“It’s a book perfectly suited for (WSU) to grapple with,” he said. “I can’t think of a better place to talk about this, and start dealing with these issues in a big way.”

Read more: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2009/aug/29/college-discourse-over-food-safety-comes-of/#ixzz0PiQ9t0gD

Timesonline: Food security and food safety debate in UK

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/article6815451.ece

Monday manifesto: Food security matters but worry about food safety, says Cargill

Our government is in a flap about food; the world prices of staples such as wheat, rice, corn and milk powder doubled and tripled between 2007 and 2008, provoking food riots, hoarding and panic in developing countries, before tumbling back in the recession. Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, wants Britain to have a “food strategy”.

It does not impress Paul Conway, a senior vice-president and board director of Cargill, the American agribusiness giant. He reckons that governments are, as usual, getting it all wrong about food.

In August, Mr Benn stepped into the media spotlight with his thoughts about food security. He wants us to think about producing more food in Britain and has launched a consultation: is our food supply adequate, is it sustainable and kind to the environment and do we waste too much food?

The global food supply is the daily bread of Cargill, one of the world’s top grain traders, alongside ADM, Bunge and Glencore. According to Mr Conway, this war-economy notion of growing more of our own food, of eating our plates clean, is a terrible muddle and causes more harm than good. The man from Cargill says that he is worried about food security but for Cargill, the big problem is not whether we will have enough food on the table, but whether it will be safe to eat.

“What is unfortunate is that the discussion revolves around food selfsufficiency. We think the two things are different.” Talk about self-sufficiency and government intervention, hoarding, market intervention and price controls, is, he thinks, “daft”. Defra — the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs — should not be tempted to tell farmers what to grow and how much. Nations should stick to growing what they are good at and trade surpluses.

“This is a small and crowded island. The UK has a competitive advantage in dairy but for years it was not allowed to produce because of [European Union] milk quotas. One of the most popular vegetable oils in this country is sunflower oil. You don’t grow a lot of sunflowers in Britain.” Nor do we grow many olives.

What keeps Mr Conway awake at night is the next outbreak of food contamination. He wants tighter rules and better enforcement and points to the recent melamine poisoning scandal in China. “That is the stuff we worry about — the supply chain, making sure every link is safe. Markets go up and down and we want to make more money, but the thing we worry about is safety.”

The upward escalator of 2007-08 made a lot of money for Cargill. The company earned $3.9 billion (£2.39 billion), the biggest profit in its 140-year history. Yet the subsequent market crash and banking crisis hurt Cargill’s financial trading division and profit for the year to May fell to $3.3 billion on turnover of $116 billion.

Rampant commodity prices pushed the shy grain merchants into the spotlight as the world fretted about food running out, the spectre of famine recurring in Asia and the need for a new Green Revolution if the world is to feed an extra 2.5 billion by 2050. Mr Conway found himself dragged at short notice into a video conference with China’s central bank governors. “The questions were: what is causing this, what are other governments doing and what recommendations do you have for us?”

It was a “perfect storm”, Mr Conway told them, a confluence of events with no specific driver. Drought in Australia and Argentina, floods in Eastern Europe, government low-carbon diktats diverting grain into biofuel, expensive crude oil that drove up the cost of fertiliser and cheap money that fuelled hedge fund speculation. No single factor made all the difference.

“Biofuels and cheap money had been around for a number of years. If you had to say what was the trigger, it was the weather issues — we saw a 50-60 million tonne drop in grain crops worldwide in one season.”

Stocks of grain had run down after years of weak prices and underlying it all was what Mr Conway calls a “good news story”: hundreds of millions of people in developing countries with more money, eating a better diet, including more meat. The bad news, he says, is that some of the “good news story” has now gone away.

Could this perfect storm recur? Yes, says the Briton who joined Cargill as a graduate trainee. It is happening in sugar, where a drought in India caused by the partial failure of the monsoon has severely cut sugar-cane production, causing financial disaster for peasant farmers. The price of raw sugar has run up 80 per cent since the beginning of the year, reaching a 28-year price peak.

These intermittent crises provoke what Cargill believes are bad policy decisions — stockpiling, hoarding and export curbs. Whether it was EU butter mountains or the international agencies set up in the early 1980s to manage markets in commodities, such as cocoa and sugar, all came into disrepute, Mr Conway says.

The reason they failed is that governments forgot the role of farmers. “When governments have held a lot of stock, such as in the Soviet Union, [price] signals did not get through to farmers. Last year, the Argentinian Government increased export tariffs, which meant there was no point in planting. You had grain rotting in some countries last year because governments banned exports.”

Instead of trying to manage food output, governments need to invest, he suggests, in infrastructure, irrigation, ports and, counterintuitively, he says that developing countries should sponsor futures markets.

“To blame futures markets for causing problems is nonsense. What they do is give clear price signals. We are a great believer in giving price signals to farmers. A futures market is a tool, a bit like biotechnology. If there is a crisis, blaming the tool is not ... wise.”

It’s a message that many don’t want to hear — that futures markets are the answer, not the problem, that genetically modified food is part of the solution to feeding the extra billions.

Cargill has a graph that shows the relative impact of improved yields and field acreage on global food production since 1975. Yield gains from improved seed and irrigation technology have almost doubled output, while the land under cultivation has barely changed.

We may now have a problem. “We have started to see some drop in global yields,” Mr Conway says. But there is a huge amount of uncultivated land in the former Soviet Union and in Brazil “without touching a single acre of rainforest”.

The other solution, he says, is GM. The Green Revolution of the 1970s, which brought high-yielding strains of wheat and rice to developing countries was largely funded by governments.

Since then, governments have cut their funding to agricultural research. The revolution in biotechnology and GM crops has been funded privately by firms such as Monsanto and Syngenta, but it is not enough and governments need to return to the labs, Mr Conway suggests. “It is a tool. To ban it is daft.”

Cargill’s early support of the case for bioengineered seed (although the company has no financial interest in GM) won the grain merchants no friends in Europe.

It was “incredibly badly handled”, admits Mr Conway, who remembers attending meetings at 10 Downing Street over the GM crisis. It will be fully accepted in Europe only when consumers see obvious benefits, which could take a decade — and Britain, he thinks, suffers from an almost philistine scepticism. “There is more distrust of science in Britain than in any other country in the world.”

Nor is he impressed with the nation’s general understanding about where its food comes from. He was astonished to discover that staff at the Downing Street policy unit were unaware that Tesco did not own the factories that produced the grocer’s own-branded products.

Cargill may be partly to blame for ignorance about how the food chain works. It is the least-known of the world’s top companies. More than willing to talk about the controversy over GM food and futures markets, Mr Conway becomes distinctly guarded over relatively simple questions about Cargill.

Is Cargill the biggest of the grain traders? “We prefer to think of ourselves as the broadest in geographic cover and range of products.” Asked about market shares in specific products, the conversation becomes even more tight-lipped. He suggests that he would be surprised if Cargill’s share of wheat was “as high as 10 per cent” and its biggest products, corn and soybean, would be in the “teens”.

Mr Conway attributes Cargill’s shyness to being private, with 90 per cent of the firm owned by the Cargill-MacMillan clan, the family descendants of the two founders. The remainder is held by senior management. The company is an intermediary and a processor, owning few consumer brands, but interest in it is intense among those who monitor the food industry. Cargill has been under US Government scrutiny on more than one occasion, first in 1938, when it was barred from futures trading in Chicago, accused of trying to manipulate the corn market.

Ten years ago, the Department of Justice (DoJ) forced Cargill to make large divestments as a condition for its merger with Continental, then a leading competitor. At the time, the DoJ found huge market concentration with four firms — ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Continental — accounting for 70 per cent of all American corn exports and 62 per cent of all soybean exports.

It is market power in the stuff of life itself and, as a law graduate, it fascinated Mr Conway, who remembers 30 years ago reading the recruitment brochure. “Across the page, a series of time clocks around the world and the anatomy of a trade. A piece of information picked up in Asia, translated to an office in Europe and translated to an office in Buenos Aires. I thought it was fascinating and I wanted to find out more.”

CV

Age: 52

Education: Bristol University (LLB), Inns of Court School of Law

Career:

1979: joined Cargill as management trainee, then held a number of roles in merchandising in Britain, America and Switzerland

1989: became head of UK corn processing

1997: became executive vice-president of European food processing

January 2006: moved to Asia as president/regional director and joined the Cargill Leadership Team in October

September 2008: elected to Cargill’s board

Family: Married, with two children, aged 22 and 19

Food for thought

Founded by William Cargill in 1865 with a grain storage warehouse in Iowa

1909: John MacMillan, Cargill’s son-in-law, took over an empire of grain elevators and flour millers, overburdened with debt

1938: Cargill involved in a legal battle with the Chicago Board of Trade over corn futures

1950s: Cargill expanded into Argentina, Brazil and Europe, establishing Tradax, its trading division in Geneva

1960s: moved into food processing, starches and syrups 1976: the United States agreed to sell wheat to the Soviet Union, opening up a lucrative trade

1980s: diversified into energy and financial trading, setting up Carval, an asset management firm. Black River, a hedge fund, was established in 2003

In 1993, the Cargill-MacMillan families sold 17 per cent of the firm to employees

In 2008, Cargill announced record earnings of $3.9 billion

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Fw: Melon Acres Announced the Recall of Cantaloupes Distributed ThroughFarm-Wey Produce of Lakeland FL Due to Potential Health Concerns

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile


From: "U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA)"
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2009 16:53:02 -0500
To: Tom Karst<TKarst@vancepublishing.com>
Subject: Melon Acres Announced the Recall of Cantaloupes Distributed Through Farm-Wey Produce of Lakeland FL Due to Potential Health Concerns

Melon Acres Announced the Recall of Cantaloupes Distributed Through Farm-Wey Produce of Lakeland FL Due to Potential Health Concerns
Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:32:00 -0500

Melon Acres announced the recall of cantaloupes distributed through Farm-Wey Produce of Lakeland, FL due to potential health concerns. The cantaloupes were shipped August 13th and 14th and were identified as 41 MG 10, Bin Numbers 4753-4980.

 

Firm Press Release: FDA posts press releases and other notices of recalls and market withdrawals from the firms involved as a service to consumers, the media, and other interested parties. FDA does not endorse either the product or the company.


Manage your FDA Subscriptions:

GovDelivery, Inc. sending on behalf of U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) · 5600 Fishers Lane · Rockville MD 20857 · 800-439-1420

NY greenhouse offers shelter from late blight

http://www.thedailynewsonline.com/articles/2009/08/25/news/5878974.txt


Giant greenhouse is shelter from late blight
Click image to enlarge
An 11-pound carton of tomatoes rolls off the packing line last week at Intergrow in Albion. The greenhouse ships about three tractor trailer loads of tomatoes daily. (Tom Rivers/Daily News)
An 11-pound carton of tomatoes rolls off the packing line last week at Intergrow in Albion. The greenhouse ships about three tractor trailer loads of tomatoes daily. (Tom Rivers/Daily News)

*
Intergrow’s enclosed system guards tomatoes
By Tom Rivers
trivers@batavianews.com
Tuesday, August 25, 2009 10:40 AM EDT
ALBION -- When it opened in 2003, owners of the 30-acre Intergrow greenhouse on Route 98 wanted a controlled environment for producing nearly uniform tomatoes, regardless of the weather.

But the enclosed growing space has offered another benefit to the company, an advantage that is increasingly proving an asset to Intergrow. The glass walls and roof offer protection from late blight and other potentially devastating diseases that have been worrying growers who have crops in open fields.

Late blight has wiped out many garden-grown tomatoes throughout the Northeast. The cool temperatures and wet weather also have left commercial growers behind schedule or with a diminished tomato crop.

But Intergrow has been mostly immune to the weather and disease. And with food safety issues likely to loom even larger in the future, Intergrow will benefit, said Dirk Biemans, co-owner of the company with 70 employees in Orleans County.

Intergrow can already meet "traceability" standards, which may be required by major retail stores and the government. They want growers to be able to trace a food safety problem, such as last year's outbreak of salmonella in California, to the field where infected fruit or vegetables were grown.

That can be a major challenge to growers with crops in multiple locations. For a company like Intergrow, where everything is grown under one roof, it wouldn't be a problem.

"We can control the climate in here better than outside," Biemans said last week at the greenhouse. "It's safer in here."

Intergrow takes precautions against diseases, which can be carried into the facility by employees and visitors. The company has a foot bath and hand sanitizer near the entrance to kill viruses and bacteria.

Biemans also said the fruit size can be affected by the amount of sunlight and temperature. The more sun, the bigger the tomatoes. The hotter the weather, the faster they ripen.

Intergrow grows hydroponic tomatoes. They aren't grown in soil. Instead, the plants get a steady dose of a solution, a mix of water and fertilizer, that helps the plants to produce mature tomatoes in about two to three months, depending on temperature. Intergrow plants at various times of the year, so the greenhouse is producing tomatoes year-round.

Intergrow hasn't reaped a financial windfall from the late blight impact on tomatoes. Biemans said tomatoes are being shipped in from outside the region to make up for some of the shortfall.

Intergrow however can use its stability in a sales pitch to buyers. The company can nearly guarantee an abundant crop. Many of its buyers, including local retailer Wegmans, like the consistent product and Intergrow's proximity. Biemans said some buyers want to purchase a crop that is locally grown.

Intergrow has its own fleet of four tractor trailers. The company this summer has been sending three trucks filled with tomatoes out each day. The company sells mostly to buyers in the Northeast, but Biemans said the company wants to expand its customer base.

Intergrow in June hired a sales/marketing manager, Albion and Cornell graduate Sarah Brown, who grew up working at her family's business, Brown's Berry Patch. She will attend food shows throughout the country, trying to build the Intergrow brand. Intergrow in October will have a booth at the prestigious Produce Marketing Association Fresh Summit International Convention & Exposition in Anaheim, Calif. The company also is developing a new Web site at www.intergrowgreenhouses.com.

Wal-Mart Green Vision Index: Supplier beware or supplier prepare?

the Sustainability Index unpacked by Roberto Michel

http://www.mbtmag.com/blog/Operation_Green/22491-Walmart_s_green_index_vision_supplier_beware_or_supplier_prepare_.php


Roberto Michel
Walmart's green index vision: supplier beware, or supplier prepare?
August 28, 2009

As I wrote about earlier this week, Walmart and a consortium of academic sustainability experts and others are working on a green product index. While my request for an interview with Walmart hasn’t panned out, their video presentations from the July announcement around the green product index point to an ambitious vision for how this index could be used.

In one particular presentation, John Fleming, Walmart’s Chief Merchandising Officer, talks about the Sustainability Index and how an index tag might one day be used in a retail setting. With a smart phone app, says Fleming, a consumer could point a smart phone to a green product tag on a pair of jeans and see information about the cotton that went into those jeans and the mileage consumed to get the product into the store, and maybe even a picture of the cotton farmer. While Fleming says it might take years to evolve to this level of eco-merchandising, he adds that “it’s really not that far off.” Just having eco-labels, he says (not the smart phone part) might be only five years off, and certainly will happen within 10 years, Fleming states.

The video is worth a look for some understanding of Walmart’s vision on eco-labeling. They seem serious about it, and as Fleming points out, already have racked up green successes such as moving the laundry detergent market to more concentrated formulas and compact packaging, and its suppliers of flat-panel TVs to sets with 30 percent higher efficiency.

Part of Fleming’s talk is about the importance of being able to appeal to the next generation of consumers, but for sure, green product indexing is important for suppliers too. While nothing is set in stone yet with the index initiative, if the vision extends to being able to see where raw materials came from for goods on a particular store shelf, or to track product “mileage” for those goods, that tends to raise the bar for the level of materials tracking data that suppliers are able to make available.

In a column for the Ross Thought in Action publication from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, Professor Tom Lyon, director of the Frederick A. and Barbara M. Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the school, notes that Walmart’s potential move into eco-labeling would impact suppliers. “They’re going to have to put in place much better tracking systems, and they’ll need really good IT systems,” he writes. “I think this puts additional pressure on the small guys. The game really moves more and more to the large-scale suppliers that can afford the fixed cost of putting in a good product-tracking system. This approach will increase costs for the suppliers in the short term. It’s conceivable there will be some economies of scale for the suppliers, especially if they have their own suppliers further upstream. That way large suppliers can use the same kind of energy-efficient, materials-reduction strategies that Walmart wants to use.”

I couldn’t agree more that the development of green index labels puts the onus on suppliers to have even better traceability systems. I also agree there are potential benefits to suppliers, not only for their own green goals like reducing emissions from their upstream supply activities, but also from being able to precisely correlate raw materials sourcing to manufacturing metrics like scrap or rework on specific production orders. Of course, better traceability has long been needed for product safety reasons like food recalls. Green is another reason to prepare for, and not just beware of, an era of very high expectations for materials traceability.

Labels:

Lawmakers scrutinize food safety

http://www.bakersfield.com/news/business/economy/x616724867/Lawmakers-scrutinize-food-safety-regulations


Lawmakers scrutinize food safety regulations
BY COURTENAY EDELHART, Californian staff writer

Food safety proposals that would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration far broader authority to regulate how food is grown and processed have divided farmers.

Some would like to see voluntary industry safety precautions made standard and mandatory nationwide to win back the confidence of frightened consumers. Others say additional bureaucracy would cost too much time and money even as many growers and ranchers are struggling to keep from going under.

In July, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would be the most significant overhaul of food safety laws since the 1930s.

The Senate is expected to take up a similar bill after returning from its August recess. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., is the sponsor.

Both measures would step up inspections and make sweeping changes to every phase of food production, from the farm to the consumer's tabletop. At each stop along that journey, producers, processors and manufacturers would be required to identify risks of food-borne illness and create a plan to address those risks.

The focus on food safety follows a spate of recent outbreaks that have sickened thousands of Americans who ate products as varied as cookie dough, peanuts, peppers, pistachios and spinach.

An estimated 76 million cases of foodborne disease occur each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some 5,000 of those cases are fatal.

"We need comprehensive food safety reform as soon as possible," said Ami Gadhia, policy counsel for Consumers Union, one of several consumer groups pushing for closer scrutiny of the nation's food supply. "The system has been in pretty bad shape for a long time, and it needs to be updated."

The California Farm Bureau Federation says it strongly supports initiatives to make food safer, but has reservations about the proposals currently under consideration.

There aren't provisions to compensate growers who suffer losses related to a quarantine or recall, for one thing.

The bureau's director of public policy, Jack King, pointed to last spring's warning to avoid tomatoes before further investigation found that, in fact, it was peppers that had sickened more than 1,400 people.

The false alarm cost the U.S. tomato industry an estimated $100 million in sales.

Some also are worried about the quarantine threshold being too low because it kicks in upon reasonable suspicion of contamination rather than when a problem is confirmed.

King added he'd prefer a voluntary system of certification to one managed by the government.

"We like the ability to do adaptive management where you can make changes as needed," he said. "We worry a little about one-size-fits all regulations."

Trade groups note the success of the California Leafy Green Products Handler Marketing Agreement, an industry safety program initiated after a deadly 2006 E. coli outbreak in spinach.

The program has become a model for other states, and some foreign buyers won't purchase California spinach from anyone who doesn't participate.

Gadhia at Consumers Union readily concedes that "the majority of growers and food processors are doing the right thing most of the time, but there are people who don't.

"Food needs to be safe no matter who you buy it from and whether or not you're rich or poor."

Western Growers, a trade group of more than 3,000 farmers in California and Arizona, says it's OK with expanding the scope of safety precautions and giving them the force of law.

"We have an awful lot invested in the food safety issue," said Western Growers President Tom Nassif. "We know how important the trust of the consumer is, because once you lose it, it's hard to get it back."

The other advantage to adopting a law nationwide is it helps California farmers compete with growers in states and foreign countries that have lower safety standards.

"This evens the playing field, because right now some of our California growers are at a disadvantage," said Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, who helped work on the bill that passed in the House.

It's not clear yet exactly when the Senate version will come up for a vote, with debate still underway on such high-profile issues as health care reform and climate change.

But local growers such as Pete Belluomini of Lehr Brothers will watch closely.

"Nobody likes more regulation," he said. "But in a changing time and a changing world, some of it, to a degree, may be necessary."

Does more matter: Can eating too much fruit keep me from losing weight?

From CNN:


http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/expert.q.a/08/28/fruit.weightloss.jampolis/


Can eating too much fruit keep me from losing weight?

Asked by Carla, INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana
Open quote
Close quote

Can eating too much fruit keep me from losing weight? Am I consuming too much sugar?

I follow Weight Watchers, which emphasizes eating lots of fruits and vegetables. Despite eating healthfully and working out regularly, I've hit a big plateau. I eat about three to five servings of fruit a day as part of my midmorning snack, lunch and afternoon snack. I also eat lean protein, low-fat dairy, vegetables and whole grains daily.



Diet and Fitness Expert Dr. Melina Jampolis Physician Nutrition Specialist
Expert answer

Hi Carla -- This is a terrific question that I hear quite often. The short answer is yes, but let me explain. Eating too much of anything will cause weight gain or prevent weight loss. Fruits and vegetables, which are higher in water and fiber and lower in calories than other foods, are less likely to cause weight gain or prevent weight loss, as you would have to eat much larger portions to consume too many calories. However, fruit has almost three times the calories per serving as nonstarchy vegetables, so it is easier to consume too many fruit calories, which can interfere with weight loss. I frequently see patients who think of fruit as a "free food" and are unknowingly consuming up to 250 extra calories a day, which could prevent them from losing one pound of fat every two weeks!

I would try limiting your fruit servings to a maximum of three per day to break through your weight loss plateau. Also, be sure that your serving sizes are correct, and that you are not eating even more than you realize. One serving of fruit is equal to approximately ½ cup, but serving sizes vary. See the USDA food pyramid chart for more information on serving sizes.

In addition, for weight loss, I would stick with fresh or frozen fruit only. Skip the dried fruit, fruit cups and fruit juice, all of which are higher in calories or lower in fiber and easier to over-consume. Regarding sugar, while the sugar in fruit, known as fructose, is healthier than refined sugar or high fructose corn syrup, it still contains the same number of calories per serving (4 calories per gram) so again, it cannot be consumed in unlimited quantities if you are watching your weight.

For more tips on breaking through weight loss plateaus, see my previous column on this topic.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Fw: OCEAN MIST FARMS ANNOUNCES PRECAUTIONARY, VOLUNTARY RECALL OF GREENONIONS

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Rose <mr@nstpr.com>

Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:17:28
To: Mike Rose<mr@nstpr.com>
Subject: OCEAN MIST FARMS ANNOUNCES PRECAUTIONARY, VOLUNTARY RECALL OF GREEN
ONIONS


Contact: Afreen Malik
Food Safety Manager
Afreen@oceanmist.com
831-970-3763

OCEAN MIST FARMS ANNOUNCES PRECAUTIONARY,
VOLUNTARY RECALL OF GREEN ONIONS

CASTROVILLE, CA ­ AUG. 28, 2009 ­ Although no Ocean Mist Farms¹ product has
been identified, the company immediately began a precautionary, voluntary
recall of iceless green onions. This decision follows confirmation from
federal regulators of a positive test for salmonella on iceless green onions
supplied by Circle Produce to several shippers, including Ocean Mist Farms.


³The health and safety of our customers and their consumers always comes
first. As soon as we learned of the positive test, it became our immediate
responsibility to begin a voluntary recall of the product in the interest of
protecting public health,² said Ed Boutonnet, president, Ocean Mist Farms.
³We quickly traced back the product using our tracking system and will work
closely with our customers and officials.²

³It¹s fortunate there have been no reported illnesses; regardless, we must
remain vigilant in ensuring food safety.² The company has suspended
receiving Circle Produce green onions. Ocean Mist Farms will continue to
provide green onions from its own growing and packing operation.

"We¹re seeing more inspections by regulators throughout the industry, which
is good. It¹s having a positive effect in ensuring food safety, and through
our systems at Ocean Mist Farms, we¹re able to trace back and quickly recall
product.²

It is possible that a small amount of product may have already been
purchased by consumers and therefore anyone who has purchased any of the
following products with the trace back codes listed below should dispose of
the product. For additional information, consumers can visit
www.oceanmist.com.

The recalled iceless green onion pack styles and code dates are as follows:

· 4 x 12 count

· 2 x 24 count

· 36 count 5.5 oz Cello Bag

· 40 count 5.5 oz Cello Bag



Trace Back Code: 95ONCP7G

Production Dates: 80309; 80709; 80809; 81109; 81209; 81309



# # #




Mike Rose € Vice President

Nuffer, Smith, Tucker, Inc.
707 Broadway, 19th Floor € San Diego CA 92101
p. 619.296.0605, ext. 236 € f. 619.296.8530 € m. 619.302.3442

www.nstpr.com € Blog: nstpr.net/blog/
Twitter: @hattrickscore

Partner, The WORLDCOM Public Relations Group
www.worldcomgroup.com

Chicago Tribune: Dominick's cuts prices up to 30%

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-thu-dominicks-0827-aug27,0,6665244.story


www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-thu-dominicks-0827-aug27,0,6665244.story
chicagotribune.com
Grocery competition: Dominick's cuts prices up to 30% on some items
Move viewed as response to Jewel; price pressures mount as grocery stores compete with discount chains

By Mike Hughlett

Tribune reporter

August 27, 2009

Dominick's is firing a volley in what looks to be a grocery price war in the Chicago area, announcing that it's cutting prices on thousands of items.

The price-cutting spree follows a similar move in April by Jewel, and it mirrors pricing battles across the nation as supermarket chains battle a weak economy and increasing competition from big discount food retailers, particularly Wal-Mart.

Dominick's said the price cuts have been implemented over the past three weeks, and advertising for the new pricing structure starts Thursday.

The price cuts are as high as 30 percent on some items, said Don Keprta, president of the Dominick's division of California-based Safeway Inc. The company didn't release an average price cut.

The reductions will apply to a range of products at Dominick's 81 Chicagoland stores. "These are things the typical shopper will have on their list," Keprta said.

Dominick's will retain its "Fresh Values" loyalty card program, which offers lower prices to consumers who carry the card. Some items in Dominick's stores might feature price cuts based on the loyalty card and the new "everyday low pricing" program, Keprta said.

Dominick's is the Chicago area's second-largest grocery chain, with an 11 percent market share in January 2009, according to data from market researcher Nielsen Co. Jewel is the area's supermarket leader, with 39 percent of the market, according to Nielsen.

Jim Hertel, a managing partner with food retailing consultant Willard Bishop, said Dominick's widespread price cutting appears to be a response to Jewel.

In April, Jewel launched its "Big Relief Price Cut," reducing prices by up to 20 percent on thousands of items. It's unclear how effective the price cuts have been in generating more business because Jewel's parent company, Minnesota-based Supervalu Inc., doesn't break out results for the chain.

A look at Supervalu's and Safeway's overall sales trends indicates why the companies need to boost traffic: Both experienced declines in same-store sales during their most recent quarters. And those negative trends have occurred even as consumers favor grocery stores rather than restaurants because of the weak economy.

One reason for declining sales at Supervalu and Safeway is price deflation. As commodity costs have fallen, prices on some retail food items have sunk too. But conventional supermarkets also are under increasing pressure from discount chains, which are thriving in a weak economy.

So price competition is heating up. "It's not everywhere, but it's in an awful lot of places and it's kind of a coming thing," Hertel said.

Widespread price cutting isn't without risk for a food retailer, Hertel said. Price cuts have to be meaningful to consumers but not so deep they crimp a grocery chains' profit margins. Also, big price cuts could make consumers think twice about a chain, given the prices they had been paying.

"Are you begging the question from the shopper's standpoint: 'Have you been overpriced on these items?' " Hertel said.

And Charles Cerankosky, a stock analyst at Northcoast Research, pointed out that while supermarkets are very vocal about price cuts, they don't tell consumers about price hikes they're making on other items at the same time.

BBC: Banana diseases hit African crops

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8225588.stm

Banana diseases hit African crops

Food supplies in several African countries are under threat because two diseases are attacking bananas, food scientists have told the BBC.

Crops are being damaged from Angola through to Uganda - including many areas where bananas are a staple food.

Experts are urging farmers to use pesticides or change to a resistant variety of banana where possible.

Scientists have been meeting in Tanzania to decide how to tackle the diseases, which are spread by insects.

'Big danger'

The scientists, from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), issued a statement saying "drastic and expensive control measures" were needed.


They recommended "completely excavating entire banana fields and treating them with pesticides, or burning the plants".

Experts say the two diseases - bunchy top viral disease and bacterial wilt - are both spread by insects and very few varieties of banana have resistance to them.

While bunchy top stunts the growth of plants by causing leaves to sprout from the top, bacterial wilt kills off plants and makes their fruit inedible.

Christopher Chemirehreh, of the Kawanda Agricultural Research Institute in Uganda, said people were particularly vulnerable in the areas where the diseases were found.

"It's a big danger because the affected areas have the banana as their staple crop," he told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

"So if they fail to control the bacterial wilt, their incomes are affected and their food is affected, so it's a very big problem."
Story from BBC NEWS:



BANANA DISEASES
# Bunchy top Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Gabon, DR Congo, Congo Republic, northern Angola and central Malawi
# Bacterial wilt Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, western Kenya, north-western Tanzania, North and South Kivu in DR Congo Source: CGIAR

Advocates ask for end to local law enforcement of immigration law

Racial profiling result of 287(g), labor advocates say

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hP40tXGOw_nqDZvXSle5kYpHLTlQD9ABGKR80


LOS ANGELES — Immigrant and civil rights advocates are asking the Obama administration to put an end to a federal program that lets local police and sheriff's departments enforce the country's immigration laws.

More than 500 organizations signed a letter dated Tuesday urging Obama to end the program, which they claim has exacerbated racial profiling.

Immigrant rights groups have long condemned the so-called 287(g) program, which trains local law enforcement officers and lets them enforce immigration law in their jurisdictions. It also has been criticized by the Government Accountability Office and led to a Justice Department Investigation of the Maricopa County, Ariz., sheriff's office.

Organizations decided to call for the program to be terminated after the Obama administration last month announced plans to revamp it, said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center.

"Our assessment is these changes are really cosmetic changes and are not going to achieve the type of structural changes that are needed," Hincapie said. "Given the violations that have been documented and the potential for increased racial profiling and increased violation, at this point, the best thing is to stop administering this program."

Signatories to the letter include the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Anti-Defamation League and others.

Matt Chandler, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the agency takes the concerns raised by the signatories very seriously but believes the administration's revamp will strengthen federal government oversight of the program.

Last month, the government said changes to the program included requiring local agencies to resolve criminal charges that led to the arrest of immigrants and establishing a complaint process.

Chandler said 66 local law enforcement agencies currently have 287(g) programs and 13 more have been approved to start them.

Chris Newman, legal programs director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said the letter was sent on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Labels:

Kennedy's immigration legacy

Will Kennedy's death hasten immigration reform? From the San Francisco Chronicle:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?blogid=14&entry_id=46354

Much has been said in the past two days about Sen. Ted Kennedy's legacy with regard to health care and civil rights, but less attention has been paid to another area where the senator from Massachusetts left his mark: immigration.

In recent years Kennedy has been a vocal advocate for comprehensive immigration reform, teaming up with Republican Sen. John McCain in 2005 to author a bill that would form the basis for repeated efforts -- so far unsuccessful -- to enact an immigration overhaul.

But Kennedy's involvement with immigration reform dates back much further. He was a freshman senator in 1965 when he became the floor manager -- and a strong supporter -- of the Immigration and Nationality Act that reversed forty years of low immigration under a system that favored Europeans and excluded Asians almost entirely.

The spirit of the civil rights movement informed that bill, the Hart-Celler Act, which eliminated discriminatory "national origin" quotas, replacing them with a more color-blind system and one which offered safe haven to refugees and encouraged family "reunification" by extending the option to immigrate to relatives of citizens and legal immigrants.

In urging passage of the 1965 bill, Kennedy famously told his colleagues from the Senate floor, "First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually.... Second, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset."

In fact, the United States has lately granted roughly a million green cards -- permanent immigrant documents -- a year. And immigrants in the ensuing decades have come much more from Asia and Latin America than from Europe.

Advocates for restricted immigration have been damning Kennedy ever since, while those who believe immigration is a source of national vitality applaud the lasting mark he made on the United States.

Former Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner Doris Meisner, who is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington DC, had this to say upon the senator's passing: "Senator Kennedy helped change the character of the immigration system, and indeed the country, bringing the United States a step closer to its founding ideals of fairness and opportunity for all."

Labels:

Immigration check in LA jails

From the LA Times today:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-immigjail28-2009aug28,0,2310084,print.story


All inmates booked into jails throughout Los Angeles County will have their immigration status checked beginning today, but federal officials said they don't have the resources to deport all illegal immigrants with criminal records who are identified.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement will prioritize illegal immigrants with past convictions for violent crimes, including murder, rape, kidnapping and robbery. Though immigration officials plan to assess every case individually, they said some with less serious criminal records may be released back into the community.

"The reality of the situation is that we don't presently have the resources to respond to every single person," agency head John T. Morton said during a recent visit to Los Angeles. "We are focusing on the worst of the worst."

Morton said the issue is "something we are going to need to work out with the Congress and the administration."

Secure Communities, the identification program, began last fall and is now in nearly 80 counties, including Ventura and San Diego. The government plans to have it up and running in all jails and prisons by the end of 2013. The program is part of the administration's focus on targeting illegal immigrants with criminal records.

Nationwide, about 12% of all inmates checked were here illegally and had prior criminal convictions. Of those, about 6,700 had been convicted of violent crimes. Roughly 60,000 others had other criminal convictions.

In Los Angeles County, more than 40 law enforcement agencies will run inmates' fingerprints through federal databases during the booking process to see if the inmates have had any contact with the immigration system. Immigration officials will then determine the inmates' immigration status, check their criminal records and place holds on those with a prior conviction of a serious crime. Once those inmates finish serving their time, they will be transferred to immigration custody for possible deportation.

If the inmate has been previously deported or has an outstanding order, they also will be subject to removal, said Trey Lund, field office director of detention and removal operations for ICE in Los Angeles.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said Secure Communities is a good program but has limitations because of lack of detention beds.

"By not increasing detention space, the administration seems to be suggesting that it is not all that serious about it," he said. "When illegal immigrants are identified, it is preferable that we don't just let them go."

Immigration officials said the new screening process avoids concerns about racial profiling because every inmates' fingerprints will be checked.

"In a nutshell, it takes the guesswork out of it," Lund said.

But Joan Friedland of the National Immigration Law Center said she is concerned about the racial profiling that occurs before booking. Friedland also said she doesn't trust that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will deport only those with serious criminal convictions. Anecdotal evidence from counties using Secure Communities shows that people are being deported based on minor crimes, she said.

anna.gorman@latimes.com

Labels:

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Don't Hold Your Breath

As I decompress, much like Messrs. Armstrong, Aldrin & Collins, from fun & necessary family time at the Maine cottage, I've been catching up with Tweets from bloggers & blogs from twits. Drivel for the most part.

However, one missive that rang true was from the erstwhile Tom Karst on August 6, entitled "God Help Those Who Don't Help Themselves". In this piece, Fearless Leader Karst accurately assessed that any facet of the produce industry that is expecting the federal government to ride in on a white horse and take care of promotion for us all--no matter what the commodity--might as well send that equine to the glue factory because that nag has a busted fetlock, or hoof, or whatever. Even on a matching basis, it ain't gonna happen.

I suppose in some constricted, convoluted way, produce promotion could garner federal dollars if pork-barreled to the part of the proposed Obama health initiative that champions a 'proactively active' lifestyle (read: increased produce consumption) to prevent disease & illnesses. But since the public option is now on life-support, to be eventually packaged as co-operatives funded by--surprise--the federal government, I'm afraid that the administration will have their hands full simply deciding on semantics & wording, and we'll be left to fend for ourselves, again.

The neatest part of Tom's post, though, was his relating of an apple marketer's remark hoping that a retailer could step to the plate with a coordinated effort, offering select commodities, rotating on a weekly basis, at below-margin prices to jumpstart not only the occasional glutted market, but consumption in general. Certainly, it wouldn't be in the retailer's best financial interests to take this initiative on, but having a rough idea as to what these chains spend on advertising annually, how far-fetched would it be to slip at least some of those expenses into the marketing budget? And then promote that feel-good, fuzzy stuff to its clientele & business partners, much like Macy's sending potential customers to Gimbel's in "Miracle On 34th Street". Even the bean counters might have a hard time nixing that.

Trying to find any type of win-win situation in an ailing economy is a tall order indeed. But Tom & the apple marketer might be onto something here...

Later,

Jay