"Spanish" tomatoes turn out to be Dutch

whiterebel

keithclancy wrote: »

Shipping from Spain (Bilbao - Rotterdam) only requires 2 extra days maximum vs road. All of the containers with perishable goods are refidgerated and handling isn't an issue as the container is not opened from when it leaves it origin until it arrives at its destination.

Container lines only depart certain days. One example from Bilbao to Rotterdam (Macandrews) leaves Thursday, arriving Rotterdam Monday. A direct trailer from Bilboa on Thursday will be offloaded and all in Dublin on Monday, whereas the container has only arrived, must be released, unpacked, reloaded and then 2 days from Holland to Ireland. At least trailers can leave every day and ship across the UK. Doesn't make any sense in any way to do it via Holland.

Anyway, this all getting a bit off topic.

AndyP

The "Produce of Holland" tomatoes would indeed be grown (hydroponically) in Holland. The seasons for fruit and veg and the locations vary greatly through the year.

In this case the shop has just not changed the display label after the season changed.
Believe me you would be amazed where some fresh produce originates from.

Nolimits

Im not sure if this has been said before, but the reason this happens, is because the system is not designed to automatically send down a new SEL when the country of origin changes. Unless a member of staff pick up on this which can be quite easy (from memory, white boxes = Irish, Blue = Dutch and Green = Spanish) the sel will go unchanged indefinitely. In theory there is supposed to be a check done on these once a week. If a customer points it out to a member of staff, the first thing the member of staff should do is print off a new sel, if that new sel isn't correct then a call should be placed into head office. The only thing is, at certain times in the year, we can get in tomatoes from two different countries that alternate for a few days, this obviously makes it difficult.

foggy_lad

whiterebel wrote: »

Container lines only depart certain days. One example from Bilbao to Rotterdam (Macandrews) leaves Thursday, arriving Rotterdam Monday. A direct trailer from Bilboa on Thursday will be offloaded and all in Dublin on Monday, whereas the container has only arrived, must be released, unpacked, reloaded and then 2 days from Holland to Ireland. At least trailers can leave every day and ship across the UK. Doesn't make any sense in any way to do it via Holland.

Anyway, this all getting a bit off topic.

this does not really matter because as with bananas the tomatoes are not ripe but can be ripened and sent to the markets as and when required

smelltheglove

Sir Peter, you have been given various reasons for this. The 'outsourcing' explanation from jorel is a good one, I mean how many countries have you been in and seen Irish beef for sale...? I remember picking up an Irish chicken in Tesco once which was packaged in the UK. Many companies source their products in one country but package and distribute somewhere else.

A Fruit and veg displays require a country of origin not a country of packaging. Lets run with this scenario first, there are 2 companies Jorel is a multinational company with a marketing and advertising specialist, connections in the international retail sector. Sirpeter is a small homegrown company with limited staff and merchandising. If Sirpeter was to sell a tomato at 40c a piece, with his connections in the sector he could sell maybe 1000 a week making him 400 euro, his land produces More but he does not have the connections to sell. In comes Jorel, he offers Sirpeter a deal whereby he will buy 20,000 tomatoes a week off him but for 30c a pop. This would bring in 6k a week. Sirpeter may loose out slightly on his percentage margin but considering the consistent bulk order he will go for it. Jorel as a bigwig in the sector can sell his Spanish tomatoes packaged in Holland for 50c a pop. 2 happy fellas.

B Seasons changed and the staff in the supermarket didn't change the label.

C Manager who admitted the mistake did not realise that just because the tomatoes are produced in Holland does not mean that is their country of origin. Not being bad but no supermarket managers I worked with knew a hell of a lot about the fruit and veg department.

Honestly I would go with a combination of a and c.

I ran a supermarket scanning department for years. These labels would be changed weekly, the whole shop would be checked weekly but fruit and veg labels would have to be changed weekly, why, because the price fluctuates. Week 1 a banana could be 1.20 a kilo week 2 it could be 1.50, so many costs are factored into this. Now its been a while since I did this, about 6 yrs so I cant remember all the details but on a Sat morning I would receive a docket from the fruit and veg deliveries, this docket would contain the price per kilo of each item and the country of origin alongside that. The new label would be printed and all the scales would be changed to match those prices.

Here is what I suggest you do, keep that picture you have there, the label looks quite fresh, then go back in 3 or 4 weeks and see if the label has been changed, you will notice this through wear and tear if it has not or price change if it has.

Corsendonk

jor el wrote: »

Product of Holland doesn't mean they are grown in Holland, they could well be Spanish tomatoes. All it means is that they are packaged in Holland. Think "Donegal Catch". Nothing Irish about it, but it's still "produced" here.

Totally wrong, have a read of the EU marketing standards for produce.

Corsendonk

foggy_lad wrote: »

this does not really matter because as with bananas the tomatoes are not ripe but can be ripened and sent to the markets as and when required

Wrong ............no one uses ethanol to ripened tomatoes like bananas.

Corsendonk

SirPeter wrote: »

Spanish tomatoes are, generally, of better quality and more expensive than Holland tomatoes, so why the Spanish growers would want to send their tomatoes via Holland, adding more cost than shipping direct to Ireland, and have them repackaged as cheaper product of inferior quality, seems questionable.

Produce companies hate handling spanish product due to the high waste and inferior product. The Dutch are the best growers in Europe. Spanish product is cheaper due to the hugh scale of operations but plant hygiene standards can be pretty low.

The main issue with spanish tomatoes is they cover the winter months to replace Irish and Dutch tomatoes, but by then your sourcing from down south in spain and then hop over to the canaries were quality goes downhill fast. Due to the nature of the product you can't ripen the tomato artificially using ethanol and heat like bananas so they pick green tomatoes with a slight break in colour at the base, then shipped up through europe to Ireland after packing. So you end up with a pretty bad tasting product as the tomato hasnt really ripened enough in the sun to develop good flavour.

Corsendonk

SirPeter wrote: »

If the shop is trying to be deceptive, the shop manager is hardly likely to admit it. I did ask the manager a few times and she admitted it was a "mistake" and said they would change the shop label.

It's kind of you to, once again, tell us all the difference between "country of origin" and "produce of". And, once again, if the box says "produce of" then the shop should not be advertising them as produce of somewhere else.

Its curious as to why some here want to try to guess as to where the tomatoes were grown, and then concoct a whole story about it!

I have a photograph of it but have no idea how to upload it here - if anyone wants to see a photo then I'll upload it if someone can advise how to do it.

The shop more than likely is not updating the Country of Origin of display. Its one of those tedious jobs everyone avoids doing. This is loose tomatoes isnt it?

For loose product the country of origin should be in visible view. Thats for all retailers including your corner store fruit and veg shop but it doesn't happen. The department of agriculture inspects this and can issue warnings to stores. If you wish to make a complaint to them I can get you contact details for your area inspector as I would be concerned about customers making a point to buy Irish but actually been misled by an old country of origin label.


There appears confusion here from one poster about "produce of" and "country of Origin" that they are two different meanings. Not for produce.

And the argument that if you bought tomatoes in Spain, brought them to Holland to ripen(where did that come from) and packaged them in prepacks they can relabel them as Dutch is totally wrong. The product has not changed, there still tomatoes, like bananas are still bananas after ripening, now if you were to peel the banana and make them into a banana split then its origin changes, like thai chicken can become Irish when breaded because it becomes a different product through a process.