07/28/05 Processed Pear Comm.research funding,Pt.1

07/28/05 Processed Pear Comm.research funding,Pt.1

When the effort of recent years to merge the various federal pear marketing orders into a single entity resulted in formation of both the Fresh and Processed Pear Committees, one key issue remained. How would Pear research continue to be funded? The former Winter Pear Control Committee collected assessments to pay the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission to handle research efforts. However, the Northwest pear industry and the Tree Fruit Research Commission have come together to reach an agreement. Explaining the details is Processed Pear Committee board member Dick Woodin. WOODIN: We've guaranteed Tree Fruit Research Commission that in total they'll have the same number of dollars for pear research as they had historically, and to get there, basically we needed that 3.1 cent on fresh, and we are hopeful of this group approving a dollar a ton research assessment for processing. And the approval for the dollar a ton assessment came from the Processed Pear Committee at a recent meeting. The agreement also had approval from the fresh side of the industry. WOODIN: The Fresh Pear Committee has basically signed off on a 3.1 cent per box research assessment, and that's on everything, Bartletts and Winter Pears. The structure of the revamped Pear research subcommittee, and other details of the research assessment plan, will be discussed in our next program.
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