A Fire Under Embers

 by ZACHARY TUMIN

“Light at the mouth of the cave,” a senior state food safety executive murmured.

He was watching Tim Wormus, an evangelist for Tibco/Spotfire’s visualization software, track a lot of tomatoes from the moment it left a California grower to its ultimate destination on someone’s plate.  As Wormus clicked through screens that showed a flowing stream of circles, lines and dots, the tomatoes made their way from the grower/shipper, to packing shed, and on to a repack house.  The biggest circle then fragmented and scattered across the screen– the repack house had broken the lot apart, combined it with other lots, and sent it on its way to distribution centers, retail outlets and restaurants for life as salsa, fresh tomatoes, fast food sliced product, or a dozen other tomato products. Read the rest of this entry »