With Chinese New Year just around the corner - starting this year on Feb. 18 and celebrated for 15 days - Tottori 20th Century pears are a good pick for retail promotion, according to David Nelley, pipfruit category director for The Oppenheimer Group. Oppenheimer is North America's exclusive marketer of the unique Tottori fruit. "Tottori 20th Century pears are a favorite among discerning customers who appreciate the meticulous care involved in producing this fruit," Mr. Nelley. "The pears definitely have a following with both mainstream and ethnic retailers. This time of year, when people are

OsoSweet is introducing new packaging for its 19th season of sweet onions from Chile, but it will keep the same program pricing that the brand has maintained for the past 15 years. "The last time we updated our brand logo and graphics was in 1995," said Rodger Helwig, marketing director for OsoSweet. "After conducting a focus group to gain consumer feedback about OsoSweets, we decided that it was time to update our graphics to deliver a more identifiable brand message to the consumer." With the goal of simplifying the existing logo, one of the major changes made was to have only the llama

Carcione's Fresh Produce Co. Inc. on the Golden Gate Produce Terminal in South San Francisco has long carried Asian produce items to service mostly small- and medium-sized retail markets and restaurants in the San Francisco Bay area. But that dynamic has changed over the years, said Pete Carcione, president of Carcione's Fresh Produce. He said that it used to be more common that the Golden Gate Produce Terminal serviced retail markets and restaurants whose customers were exclusively Chinese. But now "maybe only 50 percent of the business is Chinese," he said. Mr. Carcione attributed much of

Recently approved regulations for organic foods in Canada could have a dramatic impact on how the country's organic produce is grown, imported and sold. The Canadian Produce Marketing Association is among several industry organizations that are working to make changes to the regulations before they potentially stymie organic sales in Canada. "We are still fighting the organic battle here in Canada to ensure a workable system," Heather Holland, senior technical manager for food safety and government relations of CPMA, told The Produce News. Ms. Holland said that the recently ratified Canadian

U.S. mushroom growers are entering 2007 with a marketing situation not seen in many years as prices offered by processors are reaching last year's fresh-market prices. Laura Phelps, president of the American Mushroom Institute in Washington, DC, released a report Jan. 8 titled 2007 Mushroom Outlook from the American Mushroom Institute. The report states that recent cannery-grade prices have risen 120 percent and are hovering near the fresh-market price that Pennsylvania growers averaged last year. Historically, the price per pound paid to growers for mushrooms destined for the processed market

One major area on which the California Tree Fruit Agreement will focus in the coming year, according to CTFA President Sheri Mierau, is food safety and the possibility of establishing an industry food-safety certification program. Ms. Mierau, who was promoted to president effective Jan. 1, succeeding Blair Richardson, was previously vice president of marketing. Recent news reports of problems with food-borne illness have highlighted the need for growers, packers and shippers in all commodities to be sure that the food-safety programs they have in place are adequate. "Our industry has an