Gary James, chief operating officer of Southern Specialties in Pompano Beach, FL, has left that company to take a similar position with L&M Cos. Inc. in Raleigh, NC.

Southern Specialties announced Mr. James' resignation in a July 25 press release. He began his new position at L&M July 28 and will be based at the company's Raleigh headquarters.

If the handling of the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention several weeks ago was the fiasco that many in the industry claim it has been, the way state agencies in North Carolina and Texas and APEAM, the association of avocado growers in Michoacan, Mexico, handled a more recent detection of an unrelated strain of salmonella on avocados in a Charlotte, NC, warehouse is seen by some as a model of competency.

A sample of Serrano pepper and irrigation water on the same Mexican farm tested positive for the Salmonella outbreak that has sickened more than 1,300 people.

As a result of the finding, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration expanded its consumer advisory to warn all consumers to avoid eating raw Serrano peppers from Mexico in addition to the raw Jalapeno peppers grown in Mexico.

Brenda Mowrey, a produce buyer for Del Monte Fresh in Kansas City, MO, has one more reason to love Wisconsin potatoes.

Ms. Mowrey won a new Harley-Davidson Sportster 883c -- the grand prize of an annual sweepstakes promotion sponsored by the Wisconsin Potato & Vegetable Growers Association.

Whenever a commodity organization makes claims regarding the health benefits of its product, no matter how solid the science might be to support a "superfood" status for that product, I think one is naturally inclined to anticipate a certain degree of hyperbole and perhaps even a little spin to make the good news sound even better than it is.

I therefore naturally approached the California Table Grape Commission's new document titled The Health Potential of Grapes: A Comprehensive Review of the Literature, with a certain amount of healthy skepticism (as one rightly should).