International Produce Training

General Terms

For those of you that have read a USDA Inspection Certificate you have noticed certain terms used over and over, such as “Generally”, “Mostly”, and  “Many” to name a few.  These terms actually mean something within the inspection service.  Listed below are the terms and their definitions you may see:

  • Practically All- 95 to 100%
  • Generally- 90 to 100%
  • Most (Mostly)- 55 to 89%
  • Approximately Half- 46 to 54%
  • Many- 26 to 45%
  • Some- 11 to 25%
  • Few- 5 to 10%
  • Occasionally- 1 to 10%

These terms can be used on your own in-house inspection reports, and all facets of the industry will understand your terms.  For example, if you wanted to describe the firmness of a lot of fruit, you could report, “Most peaches are firm ripe to ripe, some firm.”

You may receive some product that is further advanced in ripeness.

As seen above, let’s say about 80% of the cartons of papayas had 95 t0 100% of the papayas with yellow color.  The remainder cartons had papayas turning yellow color.  An easy way to report this would be: “Most cartons with practically all papayas with yellow color, some turning yellow color.”

Here is another example, involving a shifted load:

If for example 10 of the 40 bins (25%) were shifted with 20% of the watermelons being damaged, you could report, “Some bins being crushed and compressed, with contents exposed, and some watermelons being split and leaking.”

As you can see, by using these terms you will be able write accurate reports, being understood by all interested parties.

One Comment on “General Terms”

Graham Says:

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