While he applauds the industry's current efforts with regard to food safety initiatives, former Wal-Mart produce executive Bruce Peterson believes that at least the same amount of energy should be spent on developing a sophisticated trace-back program.

"The problem in my mind is not food safety. The problem is the consumer reaction to an isolated outbreak in a given commodity," he said.

New findings scheduled to be released during the FreshTech Produce Safety Summit prove that HealthPro Brands' Fit Fruit & Vegetable wash outperforms chlorine by killing 99.9999 percent of harmful bacteria in dirty processing water.

In the first test of its kind, a collaborative Washington State University and the University of Idaho study tested the effectiveness of Fit vs. chlorine dioxide to see whether either product provided a "kill step" of gram-negative bacteria (those associated with food-borne illnesses such as salmonella and E. coli) in dirty flume water.

Two days worth of chef demonstrations at the American Culinary Federation Western Regional Conference in Couer d'Alene, ID, included one of the region's more prominent commodities, the Idaho-eastern Oregon onion.

According to Sherise Jones, marketing director for the Idaho-Eastern Oregon Onion Committee based in Parma, ID, the event was held April 15-17 and was coordinated by Idaho Preferred, a state branding promotional division of the Idaho Department of Agriculture.

BOSTON -- The theme of "Hollywood Days/Hollywood Nights" was quite appropriate for this year's New England Produce Council Produce & Floral Expo, April 25 here at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, as it was the produce industry that took center stage at the annual event.

Members of the California Pear Advisory Board received word in mid-April that the state's pear growers had overwhelmingly approved the expansion of the California pear-marketing program to all pear varieties produced in the state with the exception of Asian pears.

Against the backdrop of pressure from home development, high labor costs and a problematic sustained labor pool, Coachella Valley's table grape acreage maxed out some years back.

And there's no reason to suspect the situation will reverse itself.

Robert Bianco of Coachella, CA-based Anthony Vineyards said that table grape acreage in the Coachella Valley won't climb because people "can't buy land for agriculture" since it's too expensive.