Even though there have been no recent concerns over local lettuce, the Canadian Food Inspection agency has published import requirements for Romaine Lettuce from the Salinas Valley. Norm Groot, the Monterey County Farm Bureau’s executive director, said the news caught his organization off guard and that he is working to find out the reasoning behind these new rules. The requirements would affect bulk and fresh romaine lettuce from the Salinas Valley, which was valued at a combined total of almost 695 million dollars in the 2019 Monterey County Crop Report.
More than 96,million pounds of produce from Monterey County was exported to Canada in 2019.