Bagged Braeburn apples with brown-rot interiors

Customer Service

Far Northern Fruit Co.

Wenatchee, Washington 98801

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen:

Last week I did some shopping at a local produce market, in Walnut Creek, California. I purchased two three-pound bags of your Braeburn apples. They looked beautiful from the outside, all shiny and reddish-gold. Unfortunately, about a third of the apples sampled so far have interiors that are soft, rotten and brownish. It is a great letdown to bite into a beautiful-looking apple, only to discover that it is rotten on the inside. I realize that these apples have been in cold storage since their late autumn harvest in 2003. Question, does anyone bother sampling the apples for quality before they are bagged and shipped to distributors? I have been reading The Packer, the weekly wholesaling produce newspaper, published in Lenexa, Kansas, but I have not read about this problem yet. Another minor problem is the placement of the UPC label directing on top of the ingredients and producer address part of the plastic bag.

Yours truly,

James K. Sayre

18 March 2004