November 2009 NHC NEWS A Monthly Bulletin of the Northwest Horticultural Council Produce Food Safety The Northwest Horticultural Council is expending a good amount of staff time dealing with various federal and private initiatives related to the safety of fresh produce.  Driven by several high profile national public health incidents tied to certain foods, e.g., leafy greens, sprouts, and peanuts, food safety reform is an issue holding the active attention of the U.S. Congress and continues as a deep concern for all those growing, marketing, and, ultimately, selling to retail customers the nation’s bounty of healthful fruits and vegetables. Recognizing the paramount and unchallenged primary objective of safe apples, pear, and cherries for the consuming public, we are seeking: ·         to lower economic burdens now imposed on growers and shippers by multiple and duplicative food safety audits; ·         to ensure tree fruits, such as apples, pears, and cherries, are treated—appropriately—as  low risk foods; ·         to prevent any food safety regulations and rules being based on anything other than sound science; and, ·         to avoid food safety scheme mission creep, in that such public health related programs should not expand into unrelated social, labor, or environmental policy areas.  The Pacific Northwest Food Safety Committee, chaired by Eric Strutzel, is an important source of industry expertise for the NHC to draw upon as policy is developed on the many and complicated food safety issues that now are abrew in the hot cauldron of reform. ♦ Paul Cézanne and Apples “Nearby is a duet of paintings that encapsulates the show: In fact Cézanne’s ‘Five Apples’ from 1877-78 morphs into Morgan Russell’s ‘Three Apples’ from 1910… Russell saw ‘Five Apples’ at the salon of Gertrude and Leo Stein …” (From a Wall Street Journal review of October 15, 2009 about a Montclair Art Museum exhibit “Cézanne and American Modernism.”) Apart and earlier, in his memoirs of Paris, James Lord had recalled: “Over Miss Toklas’s right shoulder, hanging to the right of the fireplace, was a small Picasso watercolor of a single apple.  I spoke of it admiringly, and Alice told me that Picasso had painted it especially to console Gertrude for the loss of a small Cézanne still life of apples which Leo Stein had insisted upon having when he and his sister divided their joint collection before World War I.  I asked how the collection had actually been divided.  It had been very simple. Alice explained.  ‘Gertrude was in one room and Leo in another.  They weren’t speaking at the time.  I went from one to the other with the paintings until the selection had been made.’  And it had been equable enough, she added, for the Cézanne apples had turned out to be the only picture that both had refused to part with.  But Gertrude finally let it go, Alice said, because Leo was absolutely adamant, and when Gertrude didn’t know what to do, he sent word that she should think of it as an act of God.” ¨ Travel November 18 – NHC Science Advisory Committee meeting, Yakima, Washington. Chris Schlect November 1-5 – Meetings of the National Council of Agricultural Employers’ Executive Committee and Agricultural Policy Advisory Committee (USDA/USTR), Washington, D.C. Mark Powers November 2-6 – USDA’s Agricultural Technical Advisory Committee for Trade in Fruits and Vegetables meeting, Washington, D.C. Deborah Carter November 17-19 – Harmonization of Produce Food Safety Standards Initiative’s Technical Working Group meeting, Washington, D.C. Mike Willett November 28-December 5 – U.S.-Taiwan Plant Health/MRL Bilateral, Taichung, Taiwan. [Sir Isaac] Newton’s house in which he was born in 1642 is about twenty years older.  …Upstairs the L-shaped room is said to be the one whence Newton watched the apple fall.  The original tree’s descendant, now very aged, stands on the site of its forebear in the little apple orchard in front of the house.  The secretary is going to find out what species of apple it is. Friday, 5th March James Lees-Milne Diaries, 1942-1954 Northwest Horticultural Council 105 South 18th Street, Suite 105 Yakima, Washington 98901, USA Voice: (509) 453-3193, Fax: (509) 457-7615 E-mail general@nwhort.org