Archive

BY PHILIP FINE

AN AMERICAN food scientist has discovered a technique that would stop consumers from finding that murky liquid at the surface of their yoghurt. The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s John Lucey has found a simple alternative to adding stabilisers and pectin, the costly technique most often used by commercial yoghurt-makers who want to lessen their product’s whey content.…

BY PHILIP FINE AND KEITH NUTHALL

NOT your typical activist group, European truffle producers have formed an alliance to promote a settlement of the long running dispute between the European Union (EU) and the United States over a ban on American imports of hormone treated beef.…

BY PHILIP FINE

ALLIGATORS, long thought of as ferocious swampland predators, are

getting an image make-over courtesy of the meat industry. A test farm in the US mid-west, where alligators are as rare as, erh, alligators, has forgone the gruesome and

wasteful inevitability of burying its dead pigs and piglets, and is instead

feeding them to a couple of cold-blooded hired hands.…

BY PHILIP FINE

CALIFORNIA’S tough emissions rules seem to be translating into an increase in the number of environmentally friendly cars and trucks on the US market, according to this year’s "Green Book", published by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.…

BY PHILIP FINE

AMERICAN businesses seem to be shying away from the country’s newly available terrorism insurance policies, saying they cost too much money.

Under a mandatory federal programme, insurers have been required to provide separate insurance to commercial policyholders for events defined as terrorism and causing at least US$5 million in losses; President Bush signed the law last November and the insurance carriers had until February 24 to inform policyholders how much they would have to pay for the coverage.…

BY PHILIP FINE

IN a letter to the United States government’s top safety regulator, the auto industry’s main lobbying group has acknowledged that Sport Utility Vehicles pose dangers to smaller vehicles and says the industry will enact voluntary standards to help increase safety.…

BY PHILIP FINE

FLORIDA Governor Jeb Bush has endorsed proposals to place caps on court settlements within his state in favour of injured patients and came out swinging against the trail lawyers who he implied are using greed to push damage claims to the limits.…

BY PHILIP FINE

AN AMERICAN father’s grief has turned litigious and the USA construction company that had allegedly failed to post sufficient signs or barriers preventing access to a partly built bridge is now in his sights. Last March, South Carolina’s ironically-named Thrift Brothers Construction Co, had finished work for the evening on a bridge job in Clemson, but it seems Ron Brown, who was being chased by the local police at 4AM for – officers claim – trying to run down a pedestrian, was not adequately aware of the construction work.…

BY EDWARD PETERS
FOR a snapshot of the current state of the Chinese tobacco industry, casual observers need go no further than the massive adverts blanketing some of the main highways in Shanghai, which is generally considered to be the most go-ahead city in the People’s Republic (PRC).…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE INTERNATIONAL Labour Organisation (ILO) has highlighted ways in which tobacco companies worldwide ease the pain caused to its workers when they lose their jobs through global downsizing. A recent ILO report, called Employment Trends in the Tobacco Sector: Challenges and Prospects analyses how the use of better technology and cheaper labour in developing countries has resulted in the loss of jobs in richer countries, despite increases in production.…