Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Vertical Integration

Heinz Tomato seeds

It isn't often that the service is so slow that I resort to reading the ketchup bottle, but the other night, it was. And I saw a little phrase on the back label that was new to me "*TOMATOES GROWN FROM HEINZ SEEDS". And wouldn't you know? HeinzSeed has 57 varieties of tomato seed!

And according to their site, they have been working with tomato varieties for a long time:

"The H.J. HEINZ Company began a tomato breeding program in 1936 at Bowling Green, Ohio, to improve yield and disease resistance. The program has been continuous since that time and has focused mainly on processing tomatoes adapted to the many countries where Heinz processes tomatoes."

It's one way to control quality. If only they'd go back to using real sugar...

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