Turlock Fruit Co. Inc., headquartered in Turlock, CA, has been shipping melons from California’s San Joaquin Valley since 1918. That makes the summer of 2012 the 95th melon-shipping season for the four-generation family business.

“We basically have the same programs” this year as last year, said Steve Smith, an owner and officer in the company, whose father, Don Smith, is president, and whose son, Alec Smith is in sales with the company.

Also on sales are Greg Cooper and Dan Kerrigan. “They have been at it for years,” Mr. Smith said. “I spend most of my time growing, harvesting and packing.”

“We start our West Firebaugh, CA, in California’s central San Joaquin Valley is a popular growing area for a variety of melons. Firebaugh is about 40 miles west of Fresno, CA. (Photo courtesy of Turlock Fruit Co. Inc.)Side deal out of the Huron area with honeydews and cantaloupes,” Mr. Smith said. “Because of the favorable conditions this spring, we would anticipate having harvest between June 25 and July 1, which is a good four to seven days earlier than last year. Then we go from the Huron district to the Firebaugh district. That is where we remain the rest of the summer,” through to the middle of October with cantaloupe and honeydews.

The company also has mixed specialty melons, and those were expected to start around July 15, continuing to the end of September, he said.

The varieties of specialty melons grown by the company are Casaba, Juan Canary, orange flesh honeydew, Sharlyn, Santa Clause (also called Piel de Sapo), Crenshaw, Hami and Galia.

The program this year will be similar to last, other than there will be “probably a few less cantaloupes than we had last year,” he said.

Among the trends he has observed in mixed melons is a growing popularity for orange flesh, Hami and Galia, he said. The others are either holding steady or in slight decline.

The earlier start to the season this year will give an additional week for harvesting and marketing, which should be “a positive thing for the whole district,” Mr. Smith said. “Even if the acreage were the same,” the volume would be “spread out over a longer period of time.”

The honeydew melons are shipped under the “King of the West” and “Sycamore” labels. The cantaloupes and mixed melons are shipped in the “Peacock” label.

There are no changes to the facilities this year, Mr. Smith said. “We load all of our cantaloupes in our Firebaugh facility and all of our honeydews and mixed melons in our Turlock facility.”

Food safety has been a major focus for the company and the industry, and is becoming increasingly so. Two recent changes to the California cantaloupe marketing order are a geographic expansion to include not just the San Joaquin Valley but all melon growers in the state, bringing the Imperial Valley into the program, and the adoption of a mandatory food-safety protocol “as part of the marketing order.” Both measures passed unanimously in an industry vote.

“We will be meeting June 6 as a newly formed board to discuss the guidance documents that have been developed over the last few months,” he said. “It has been a very positive, proactive response” to the food-safety concerns that arose last fall following a Listeria outbreak associated with cantaloupe in Colorado.

Food safety “has been on everyone’s mind in California since 1991-92 when the Salmonella scare hit,” he said. “We have had intensified food-safety efforts ongoing for 20-plus years. It has been a big priority. We have had a history of research that we have funded [as an industry] to determine what threat if any there is and what we can do about it as growers, packers and marketers. We have had those in place for a number of years. This is not new, really. This is just a more rigorous approach, just in response to what happened in Colorado.”

Extensive testing of California cantaloupe has “never found a positive of Listeria, Salmonella or E. coli,” he said. “It is not to say it’s impossible, but certainly it shows we have taken the steps that make it less likely.”