The Blame Game:
Bullock vs. Decas

4/8/99 - Boston's TV Channel 4
aired a report about "cranberry concerns" with Ocean Spray CEO Thomas Bullock attributing the crisis of supply exceeding demand to the independents over-producing.

He stated that Ocean Spray "built the demand inside the co-op and other people benefited from that."

Independent handler John Decas  fires back "I would think that if I was an Ocean Spray grower that my company ought to be focused on value added products, sell products in that sense and why grow more than you can handle?"

Caught in the middle, smaller growers like David McCarthy who told interviewer John Dougherty, "I personally left (Ocean Spray) in 1995 because of the way the way we felt the company was being managed. Unfortunately it seemed to be coming true at the moment."

(top right) Ocean Spray CEO Tom Bullock, (middle) John Decas and (bottom) former Ocean Spray grower David McCarthy. Click on photos above for enlargement

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