After Hurricane Dean ravaged the countryside of northern Belize, Brooks Tropicals employees helped to distribute emergency food and supplies for the United Nations' UNICEF program. Brooks also sent crews and equipment to clean up debris and help repair homes in the area.

Maurice (Marty) Leon Martin, 77, of Salinas, CA, died of cancer Saturday, Nov. 3, in his home surrounded by his family.

Montreal-based HIDE-Pack and Frisco, TX-based Domino Integrated Solutions Group have teamed to develop a method of implementing radio frequency identification technology in a wide variety of packaged goods by embedding an RFID inlay within the structure of a package.

The HIDE-Pack concept -- an approach to integrated RFID-enabled packaging -- is a patent-pending technology owned by HIDE-Pack and available commercially through Domino ISG.

A 7.7 earthquake that struck northern Chile Nov. 14 is expected to have no effect on the country's fruit exports.

Tom Tjerandsen, managing director of the Chilean Fresh Fruit Association in Sonoma, CA, told The Produce News a couple of hours after the quake that it was "in the far north in the dry desert area." He contacted the trade in Santiago and Valparaiso after the quake "and no one felt anything," he said. "It won't have any impact on the food exports heading north from Chile."

The Canadian produce industry is a close-knit group that can be compared to a large extended family. That family lost one of its more beloved and respected members on Nov. 8 when Cory Clack-Streef, president of Mississauga, ON-based Faye Clack Communications, died following a two- year battle with breast cancer. She was 46.

WASHINGTON -- A Senate vote cast Nov. 16 failed to end the stalemate on the 2007 farm bill, a move that could jeopardize the hard-fought funding reforms for specialty crop programs this year.