Raw product supplies of iceberg, romaine, and green leaf lettuce are extremely limited due to recent soil disease and plant virus issues. Volatile weather has also compromised quality and reduced shelf-life potential in broccoli, cauliflower, and tender leaf items from California’s Salinas and Santa Maria Valleys.

Due to the disease and virus challenges, many value-added packs are underperforming, and will continue struggling to achieve shelf-life expectations until stronger supplies from desert growing regions become available early to mid-November. One of the main challenges for value-added packs is raw product quality not harvested at ideal maturity, which increases bruising and mechanical damage when moving through the cutting, washing, and bagging process, which in turn leads to early breakdown/shelf-life reduction.

Markon’s Quality Assurance Team is working with our Ready-Set-Serve (RSS) processors to choose the best product for our RSS products, but even the best raw product today has challenges, and it is not possible to eliminate all damaged or compromised product from finished packs.

For more context, please refer to the video linked in the below update. Please contact your Markon customer service representative for more information.

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