Fresh Cut Magazine

A Truly Fresh Summit

Last month’s Fresh Summit was my fourth time attending the show, and it the best, in my opinion. I’m sure many of the attendees and exhibitors would agree. The show floor was packed with a record-setting 19,000 attendees and the educational sessions were nearly all standing room only. The first Fresh Summit I attended was in San Diego in 2006. There were many new products, but the produce industry was still reeling from the spinach crisis. The next year in Houston it seemed there were fewer new products as everyone focused on food safety. But by Orlando in 2008 the climate was changing and more new products were rolling out. And in 2009, fresh-cut processors were introducing a number of new and innovative products at the Anaheim, Calif., Fresh Summit Expo. One of the biggest trends I noticed was the emphasis on snack-sized items. Fresh-cut containers that…  » Read more

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New line offers fast food without the fat

Apio Inc. built its business growing and shipping broccoli, so it’s ironic that the name actually means “celery” in Spanish. However, it was a group of five celery growers that started the company in 1979 in the Santa Maria Valley of California. The business invested in innovative technology from the start, and in the early 1980s Apio developed a broccoli-packing trailer that changed the way the product was harvested. It had always been field-packed in bins and then repacked for shipping in the shed, but the trailer Apio developed allowed the company to have it ready to ship from the field. The innovation helped Apio become the leading shipper of broccoli in the nation. That business grew, making some waves in 1990 when President Bush banned broccoli from Air Force One. Apio sent a truckload of fresh broccoli to the White House and asked the president to…  » Read more

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One doesn’t have to come at the expense of the other, experts say

Agriculture is a naturally sustainable industry, but growers in California are finding it harder to be sustainable in light of food safety guidelines. But the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive, and the Center for Produce Safety at the University of California, Davis, is working with stakeholders to provide research on the interaction between the environment and food safety. There is evidence that food safety requirements are damaging sustainability efforts, according to a California study. The Resource Conservation District of Monterey County released “Challenges to Co-Management of Food Safety and Environmental Protection: A Grower Survey” this summer, which was compiled from 178 growers. The study found growers using the leafy greens metrics and food safety requirements from national or international buyers were most likely to run into obstacles managing the environment and food safety. More than half of the leafy greens growers that responded to the…  » Read more

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