Comment back to "foodman"

Take a look at the comment attached to my March 26 posting. "Foodman" sounds like he is skeptical that the food processing industry is really as green as I make it sound. I thought his comments worthy of a response y'all can see.

I think foodman makes a fair point. Food processing takes quite a bit of energy, starting at the farm, through raw transport, storage, cooking/blanching/drying/frying freezing, etc, transport of finished good, etc. Lots and lots of energy. And, let's be honest, quite a bit of waste, in many forms. Waste of raw product, waste of energy (vs. use of technologies that could conserve), waste of labor, waste of finished product, waste of water.

But my basic response is that there is a broad continuum of conservation vs. waste that I see in the processed potato industry. One one end, I see McCain building wind turbines and waste processing facilities to recover power. And I see Pepsico with their "new" Casa Grande plant, that is essentially power-neutral, from what I hear. On the other ends, as I walk around the factories in the potato industry, I see lots of spillage and piles of raw and semi-finished product on the floor, lots of steam going out stacks, lots of water dripping everywhere.

Even here at Key, our solutions include features that greatly reduce energy consumption (e.g., our new cameras and LED lights), while we have some equipment that continues to drip.

The point is, we all start the conversion to green from where we are and continually make progress. There is no point to which we arrive and say the job is finished. We continue to invest in energy-saving technologies, and make those available to those who choose our solutions. Are we perfect? No way! But we have a direction, and are committed to doing our part to reduce energy and water consumption, not to mention making maximum use of raw materials.

Good comment, foodman!

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