Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
in the spinach and leafy greens market. In 2006, only small volumes of fresh-market
spinach and lettuce were imported: 3% of spinach for domestic consumption came
from imports, 2% of head lettuce, and 1% of leaf and romaine lettuce.
Despite several widely publicized cases, imports do not necessarily pose more of
a risk than domestic products for food safety hazards, and no statistically reliable
surveys are available to compare safety. Many U.S. buyers require the same food
safety practices for imports as they do for domestic production. New production any-
where may be more problematic than production practiced by experienced growers.
Food safety is a learning process and adjusting to local microbial risks may take time.
In addition, many locations lack infrastructure (such as safe water supplies), and
adopting food safety practices may be particularly challenging for foreign growers in
such areas producing for the U.S. market (Dong and Jensen 2008). However, many
well-established export industries in foreign countries have met this challenge, as
evidenced by the signifi cant share of product imported without incidents or food safety
problems.
The case of raspberries from Guatemala provides an example of a problem with
imported produce (Calvin 2003). In the late 1980s Guatemala started to export fresh
raspberries to the United States in the spring and fall. It was a new export crop for
Guatemala and it fi lled a lucrative market niche between Chilean winter supplies and
the beginning of U.S. summer production. Annual outbreaks in the U.S. and Canada
from 1996 through 2000 were linked to Guatemalan raspberries contaminated with
Cyclospora , a parasite that no one knew much about at that time. The FDA issued
import alerts on fresh raspberries from Guatemala for several years. Extensive and
costly efforts to improve food safety did not solve the problem, and 2003 was the last
year with substantial exports of the product from Guatemala. Mexico, which began
raspberry exports to the U.S. about the same time as Guatemala, has not been linked
to any outbreaks and is now the largest supplier to the U.S. market, followed by Chile
(Fig. 22.3 ).
Metric tons
6,000
5,000
Mexico
4,000
3,000
2,000
Chile
1,000
Guatemala
0
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
Figure 22.3. U.S. import of raspberries from Guatemala, Mexico, and Chile, 1990-
2006. Source: U.S. Department of Commerce.
 
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