“I’ve been promoting local my whole life, but I’m thinking now that we may have shot ourselves in the foot. Michelle Obama asked us to grow gardens, and I believe everyone did.”

So say shippers like Gary Margolis, president of Boca Raton, Fla.-based Gem Tomato & Vegetable Sales Inc. in The Packer.

Then there’s what he and other big shippers throughout the produce industry call an uneven playing field when it comes to food safety.

“While the local guys are shipping under the food safety radar, our guys are swabbing their warehouses with toothbrushes,” Margolis said. “We have to jump through all these hoops, and they come in through the back door.”

Let’s hope it doesn’t take a food safety outbreak for the industry and the government to bring some more order to “local.”