Publisher's message 2007.

While the whole usually is the sum of its parts, occasionally a part can define the whole. In my opinion, the Mushroom News General Issues are microcosms of the magazine. Though some readers likely look forward to theme issues, such as Pest Control, for articles pertinent to their businesses, twice yearly, in May and October, the Mushroom News Committee offers a diverse collection of interesting and useful articles in General Issues that surely must stimulate the interest of any agribusiness manager. Some General Issue articles would have been good fits in theme issues but either space was insufficient or they were deemed too timely to wait. Others warranted publication, in the committee's opinion, though they lacked appropriateness to a theme. Regardless, these issues are general in content but anything but ordinary. A perusal of year end indices since 2000 reveals a multitude of topics from mites to casing management, safety to SMS, retail consolidation to Avian Influenza Virus, drug testing to food traceability, Trichoderma to mushroom consumption, and much more. Cap this variety with Reid Goldsborough's savvy Personal Computing and Ray Samp's Spore Prints, columns that frequently appear in these issues, and you have a smorgasbord of valuable articles, making General Issues anything but throwaways.

Actually, these two issues are keepers because they reflect the diversity of our business concerns and interests. They recognize that, while growing mushrooms is critical to our success, we are not just about growing. In doing this, they mirror the diversity of the 10 theme months. General Issues, therefore, are much more than something the Mushroom News Staff threw together because they ran out of themes. Any one of them is an "index" to the variety you find all year in your trade publication. I look forward to both of them.

New Members

Grower

Rakhra Mushroom Corp

10719 County Rd. 5 South

P.O. Box 2002

Alamosa, CO 81101

Phone: [phone]

Associate

IPP Ltd

Unit 13, Bollington Lane

Nether Alderley

Cheshire, UK SK10 4T

Phone: [phone]

Kord Products Inc.

390 Orenda Road

Brampton, ON L6T 1G8

Canada

Phone: [phone]

--Bill Barber, Mushroom News Publisher