THORNTON, CO -- A 17-year-old high school junior was awarded top honors and $1,000 cash at a March 19 student chefs' cookoff sponsored by the Colorado Potato Administrative Committee.

Six student chefs were chosen from an original field of 50 to compete in the cookoff. Heather Crosby, a student at Academy of Charter Schools in the Denver metro area city of Westminster, CO, was chosen by judges for her mashed potato doughnuts, which included Colorado russets as a primary ingredient.

Oxnard, CA-based Boskovich Farms has filed a libel lawsuit against Taco Bell Corp. alleging that Taco Bell continued to link its green onions to the December E. coli outbreak that sickened more than 70 people in the Northeast, despite knowing the produce was not contaminated.

The lawsuit was filed the week of March 19 in Orange County Superior Court. Taco Bell Corp. is based in Irvine, CA.

Nothing quite like the light brown apple moth has ever been found in California before, nor was its arrival from other countries where it is native or established considered likely, so the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Food & Agriculture are up against a steep learning curve in dealing with recent finds of the insect in the San Francisco Bay area.

Bruce Knight, undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was the keynote speaker at the annual membership meeting luncheon of the California Grape & Tree Fruit League, held Monday, March 26, at Disney's Grand California Hotel in Anaheim, CA.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep Sam Farr (D-CA) defended a move to attach $25 million for financially strapped spinach producers to an emergency spending bill for the four-year-old Iraqi war.

The House of Representatives passed the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill March 23 with $25 million that would help spinach producers nationwide who were hurt by the voluntary recall after the E. coli O157 outbreak in 2006 that sickened more than 200 people and resulted in three deaths.

Though proprietary varieties represent the largest percentage of strawberries planted statewide, representing 40 percent of the state's acreage, it is a University of California variety -- Albion -- that experienced the biggest jumped in acreage planted this year over last.