● Newly proposed safety rules aimed at food imports contain one of the better examples of bureaucratic acronyms run amok that I have recently seen: SAHCODHA, which refers to hazards that are reasonably likely to cause “serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals.”

The Food and Drug Administration uses it, for example, in the following sentence: “Option 1 of the co-proposal would establish certain requirements for SAHCODHA hazards to be controlled by the foreign supplier and different requirements for non-SAHCODHA hazards and SAHCODA hazards that the foreign supplier verifies have been controlled by its raw ingredient supplier.”

● Former U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd Jr. died early this week at age 98. He was the product of a prominent political and apple-growing family located in Winchester, Virginia. One of the last of the old-time Southern Democrats and school segregationists, Senator Byrd left office in 1982 and then successfully faded away.

● Transitions:  This week Blair Richardson was named as the new president and CEO of the U.S. Potato Board.

I first met Blair in 2002 when he arrived to lead the now-defunct California Tree Fruit Agreement. And the American Meat Institute in July announced that its long-time leader, J. Patrick Boyle, will depart that Washington, D.C.-based  trade association this December. I first met Patrick in the 1980s when he was a policy staffer for the United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Association (now renamed the United Fresh Produce Association); we have since served together for many years on a federal agricultural trade advisory committee.

●  Political Fruit: “Sharpton has long since shed the bulk and anger that accompanied his rise in the political arena, in the days when he, too, once dreamed of the mayoralty. On this occasion he played the urbane host.

He asked the candidates to address ‘the distinct problems’ of the ‘black and Latino communities.’ ‘We live in the Big Apple,’ he said, and ‘we can’t get a bite.'” From an article on the New York City mayor’s race by Andrew Meier appearing in The New York Times Magazine, July 25, 2013.