TV News and Old News

I tend to take everything I see in a television news program with a grain of salt.

While working at a local news affiliate during college, I learned that broadcasters rarely have the time to tell the whole story, and definitely don’t have the time to research breaking news.

Follow-up stories are almost unheard of, because once a news piece is aired it becomes “old news.”

We all saw this during the nationwide spinach recall. For a few weeks, we heard the same information, or misinformation, aired over and over. But once the initial crisis was over, the story became old news.

But in March I stumbled across a story on the Today Show, which I only happened to see because I had taken the day off work. It was part of the program’s Farm to Fork series following leafy green production from the field to the processing facility.

Bruce Taylor and Mark Borman, both of Taylor Farms, were interviewed and all of the footage came from Taylor Farms fields in Yuma, Ariz.

This was an excellent piece of public relations for the fresh-cut industry, and I hope many Americans can feel more secure about the safety of their packaged leafy greens.

Taylor Farms did an excellent job in portraying a food safety system -– workers were covered correctly, everything was thoroughly cleaned and the processing facility was spotless. The company should be congratulated, as should the Produce Marketing Association and the Partnership for Food Safety Education for working with the Today Show to give a fair picture of the industry.

In this issue of Fresh Cut, you’ll find a review of FDA’s report on the spinach outbreak, and some steps that have been proposed to reduce the risk of contamination in the field and the processing plants.

This issue also features F&S Produce Co., a New Jersey processor that has grown from a seasonal processor and farming operation to a company that moves 50 million pounds of produce annually, in fresh, frozen, fresh-cut or brined form.

I hope you had the chance to stop by Fresh Cut’s booth at FreshTech and Fresh Marketplace. You’ll see a wrap up of those shows in the coming issues of Fresh Cut.


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