So all’s well that end’s well ...or is it?

This week, nearly five months after issuing a clarion call to the industry to back a generic promotion campaign to boost consumption, the Fresh Produce Consortium has come out of the woods and announced that it has raised sufficient funding to launch Eat in Colour.

Hopefully, the fact that the FPC is coy about disclosing exactly how far it has fallen below the hoped for £1.5 million to cover the next three years will not be a double-edged sword, that once again leaves the few to carry the burden of the many.

Like a poker game, what the FPC’s decision has done is create the necessary environment whereby those who have indicated they are prepared to play, are now being asked to stump up the money.

Meanwhile, we will all have to wait for another month before the strategy and subtleties of a scaled down campaign - which may be very different from the one initially envisaged - is revealed.

Once established, the campaign management board would do well to note the experience of its predecessor the Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Information Bureau.

Despite its good record over 20 years, one of the FFVIB’s main concerns became fund raising.

There is nothing easier in PR than spending other people’s money, but the FPC is right when it recognises there have been some excellent examples of fruit and vegetable public relations on far smaller budgets.

But to my mind the difference is that these in the main have been focused on individual products or product groups, and therefore the message to buy can be more sharply and seasonally defined.

Increasing total awareness is a far wider brief that not only lasts year-round, but also encompasses hundreds of products. And I have a feeling that each contributor will be looking to support its own particular interest. That of course is unless times have changed.

Hardly a day goes by without the cry to eat more fruit and vegetables being heard from government, the medical profession or the diviners of the culinary art.

But what has been missing is what the FPC identified last October - the need to lighten up the messages. Understandably, being told constantly that fresh produce is good for you eventually becomes boring.

However, the FPC must also retain a clear idea of how to respond to the media should it report that crops are soaked in pesticides, that imports unnecessarily eat up air miles, or that there are growing industries on the other side of the world operating on slave labour.

As far as journalists are concerned, promoting an organisation’s feel-good message is one thing. But in return that organisation needs to be prepared to answer the tricky questions when the stories are not all good news.