Corporate extortion is likely to keep booming in 2014, and we don't mean extortion of corporations, as is practiced by Somali pirates or entrepreneurial Russians. We mean extortion by corporations.

The importance of produce traceability has been made devastatingly clear in recent years by well publicized incidents of illness, and even death, due to contaminated lettuce, spinach, cantaloupes and more. While officials in such cases spend weeks tracing the contamination to its source, all growers, wholesalers and retailers suffer market consequences.

Does commercial shipping have to be a matter of life or death?