Four Seasons Produce Inc.'s distribution center in Ephrata, PA, has earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's prestigious Energy Star, the national symbol for superior energy efficiency and environmental protection that is awarded to some commercial buildings and industrial plants that rate in the top 25 percent of facilities in the nation for energy efficiency.

Four Season's facility is one of only two refrigerated warehouses in the country to earn the designation.

SALINAS, CA -- The Grower-Shipper Association of Central California presented its E.E. (Gene) Harden Award for lifetime achievement in Central Coast agriculture to Jim Lugg of Fresh Express.

The award was formally presented to Mr. Lugg June 21 as part of the organization's annual dinner-dance at the Corral de Tierra Country Club in Salinas, CA. The association's chairman, Dennis Donohue, presided over the presentation along with Fresh Express President Tanios Viviani and association President Jim Bogart.

WASHINGTON -- The epidemiological evidence may point to tomatoes as the likely cause of the Salmonella outbreak, but health officials say they are "keeping an open mind" as new illnesses continue to be reported.

"We continue to see a strong epidemiological association with consumption of tomatoes," said Patricia Griffin, chief of the Enteric Diseases Epidemiology Branch at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. But produce investigations are very difficult because vegetables are often eaten together, Dr. Griffin said at a June 27 press briefing.

Dan Kelly, the 51-year-old assistant manager of the Washington Growers Clearing House in Wenatchee, WA, is expected to be released from Central Washington Hospital by this weekend (June 28-29). Mr. Kelly was admitted to the facility in critical condition the afternoon of June 25 following a bicycle accident.

WGCH Manager Kirk Mayer told The Produce News, "The report we have from the hospital [on June 26] is that he is in satisfactory condition."

Mike Mizokami, founder of the "SunFed" label and a pioneer in year-round production for the U.S. market who operated farms in both the United States and Mexico, died June 12 in Chandler, AZ. He was 89.

New York fruit growers initially believed that the June 18 hailstorm may have caused as much as 60 percent crop loss, but a week later, reports indicate that while losses were major, they are not as bad as first thought.

"Assessments at this time are that statewide, approximately 6.5 [million] to 7 million bushels of apples have been damaged or destroyed in one degree or another," Jim Allen, president of the New York Apple Association in Fishers, NY, told The Produce News June 24.