Burger King Pitches Penny To Tomato Pickers

You say tomato, I say "Show me the Money"

From The Economist:
"After one embarrassment on top of another".... [ed note: like being caught SPYING on Florida Student/Farmworker activists in Fort Lauderdale] "Burger King backed down last month and reached a ground-breaking agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, representing mostly seasonal farmworkers from Mexico, Central America and Haiti. The Miami-based company agreed to pay them one cent more for every pound (450g) of tomatoes they pick, and to improve their working conditions."

read the full story here

"The coalition is still on the warpath. It wants other big buyers to pay the extra cent. It is targeting Wal-Mart, as well as the Subway sandwich store chain, Chipotle restaurants, and Whole Foods supermarkets. But most of all it wants people to think about what goes into the sauce they slather on their burgers."

And in other tomato news:

From Florida Trend: Tomato Growers Seek Restitution [Palm Beach Post]

Saying sales of their crops are still down 30 to 40%, Florida tomato growers are lining up congressional support to seek restitution for millions of dollars in losses linked to the nation's salmonella outbreak. "We believe it is maybe $100 million or more in Florida," said J. Luis Rodriguez, trade adviser for Florida Farmers Inc. in Lake Worth.

And:

GENEVA (Reuters) - Food safety experts agreed for the first time on the qualities defining a tomato, in a first step toward an international code on preventing fruit and vegetable contamination.

Tomatoes are currently the focus of an investigation by U.S. health officials who are looking for the cause of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened 922 people in at least 40 states.
Story here

World Health Organization (WHO) scientist Peter Ben Embarek said the classification of tomatoes based on their size, shape, color, firmness, and defects, and accordant rules on tomato labeling, would facilitate trade and eventually make it easier for regulators to impose safety standards.

"Now it is much clearer for everybody what you call a Class 1 tomato, for example, and what you can expect when you buy a Class 1 tomato," Ben Embarek said at the end of a week-long meeting of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a food safety body.

"It is part of an effort of Codex to improve the quality and safety of fruit and vegetables," he said, adding that officials planned to later focus on leafy green vegetables and melons.

And now, the good stuff:

Can Tomatoes Carry An Oral Vaccine Against Alzheimer's Disease?
ScienceDaily (July 9, 2008) — The humble tomato could be a suitable carrier for an oral vaccine against Alzheimer’s disease, according to HyunSoon Kim from the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB) in Korea and colleagues from Digital Biotech Inc. and the Department of Biological Science at Wonkwang University.

Gail Shepherd