cle. I am certain that readers and my fellow
Costco members would be happy to know
that American pets far outnumber the
reported statistics.
Will the hothouse veggies be available at
my warehouse?
Jane Seeley
Mount Shasta, California
According to the 2005–2006 APPMA
National Pet Owners Survey, pet ownership
is at an all-time high, with 63 percent of
American households owning a pet.
Americans own an estimated 74 million
dogs, 91 million cats, 17 million birds, 18
million small animals, 11 million reptiles and
a whopping 149 million fish.
Reply from Keith Neal, Costco produce
buyer:
As evidenced by these astounding statistics and the amazing business profiles in your
article, our pets have a profound influence on
our lives, and we are all the better for the love,
support and enrichment they provide.
These peppers are grown in hothouses in
Baja California, Mexico. The ones you saw
were either from Joe Paez (Prime Time
label) or the Batiz family (Royal Flavor).
Both growers supply hothouse-grown peppers to us from Baja, and both use beneficial insects to control the “bad bugs.”
Artificial ripening agents and wax are
not used on the peppers we buy.
Anne C. Ferrante
Senior Director, APPMA
Paez and Batiz are among of the
top three hothouse pepper growers in
Mexico.
Hothouse or not?
I enjoyed your article on hothouse veggies [February issue]. As a gardener and lover
of organic foods, I was encouraged by the
quality of the product produced by these
methods: the use of natural bugs, quality feed
and no ripening agents or wax.
However, when I went to buy the peppers
in the Redding, California, warehouse, I
noticed all the peppers were grown in
Mexico, not in a hothouse. And since I know
that commercially grown peppers are one of
the most highly sprayed and chemically
treated vegetables, I did not buy them.
When you use beneficial insects,
there is a very strong disincentive to
spray anything, because doing so will
kill your beneficial insects! This goes
double for hothouse tomato growers,
who rely on bees to pollinate their
plants. These bees are very expensive, and spraying kills them. Pepper plants
have both genders and self-pollinate without
the use of bees.
Attached is an aerial view of some of the
Beneficial insects control the “bad bugs”
in these Baja California, Mexico, hothouses, which supply peppers to Costco.
Batiz hothouses in Southern Baja. You can
probably tell from the lack of green that this
isn’t British Columbia, and from the ocean in
the background that this isn’t Ontario,
Canada..
Impossible math
Your Buying Smart “Costco vs. the competition” sidebar [March 2007, page 47] proclaims that a member can reap a “308 percent
savings” by buying Kirkland Signature [out-door furniture] vs. the competition. Since a
50% savings would mean paying half the
retail price, and a 100% savings would mean
that the item is free, does a 308% savings
mean that you pay the customer more than
twice the retail price to haul it away?
Randy Drake
Peachtree City, GA
Oops! We caught that mistake too. That
308 percent figure should have been labeled
“price difference” instead of “savings.”—Ed.