NEWARK, DE -- Produce Marketing Association's first-ever affiliate is now being formed for members in Australia and New Zealand, and will officially begin operating this fall, according to association leaders. PMA President and Chief Executive Officer Bryan Silbermann announced news of the formation of PMA Australia/New Zealand May 25 to attendees of the association's 2009 Fresh Connections: Australia & New Zealand Conference held in Sydney. The announcement comes two years after the association founded PMA's first country council in 2007 for these Southern Hemisphere countries. "Recently our

WASHINGTON -- From October 2008 to March 2009, Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella Inc., based in Terra Bella, CA, continued to process roasted pistachios and ship product despite the fact that four laboratories detected Salmonella on eight occasions, according to an inspection report by the Food & Drug Administration. After a 17-day inspection, the FDA delivered the April 30 report, known as the 483 form, to the company with a list of findings. The company failed to monitor roasting temperatures before January 2009, ran raw and roasted products on the same equipment, and did not have an air-flow

The berry patch is led by strawberries first and foremost, followed by blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. But raspberries are more than holding their own. Nishan Moutafian, raspberry and blackberry business manager for Watsonville, CA-based Driscoll Strawberry Associates Inc., told The Produce News that the quality of Driscoll's raspberries is improving continually. The company's raspberries all are proprietary varieties. "Our [raspberry] offering today is much more durable than three to five years ago," Mr. Moutafian said, adding that the company's aggressive raspberry breeding

The first-ever U.S. watermelon promotion in Japan will take place this August. Gordon Hunt, director of marketing for the Orlando, FL-based National Watermelon Promotion Board, arranged the promotion. Mr. Hunt is fluent in Japanese and long ago, in another position, helped the Florida Department of Citrus open the Japanese market to Florida citrus. As reported in The Produce News in April, Mr. Hunt spent the last full week of March in Japan with NWPB shipper-members Brent Harrison and Dan Van Groningen. The trio worked then to open the Japanese market for North American watermelons. Mr. Van

If you're not in business to make a profit, then why are you in it at all? Every company wants to make money. This past year has seen the recession eating away at profits and companies struggling to make ends meet. When profits fail to increase, they drag down growth, which isn't very healthy for the future of any establishment. Does your profit-and-loss statement have management sweating it out every quarter to keep the company above water? Too often, company executives get enmeshed in the same routines that suppress the organizational profits and productivity. The first and most popular

Growers of California stone fruit, including white-flesh peaches and nectarines, have suffered hard times in recent years as production costs continue to rise and market prices have stagnated or declined. The fallout has been significant, as several major growers, shippers and packers, some of which have been in business for generations, have downsized, restructured, sold off assets, or simply closed their doors. There is a widespread consensus in the stone fruit industry that there will be still more fallout in the weeks and months ahead. As of this writing, there are idled packinghouses and