Search Results for: food

BY PHILIP FINE

THE AMERICAN Bakers Association has been told that its members can now employ the words ‘fresh bread’ on their products. Since 1993, the ABA has had to settle for ‘freshly baked’ thanks to the preservative calcium propionate, which the US Food and Drug Administration said disqualified bread from being called ‘fresh.’…

BY PHILIP FINE

RUSSIAN officials have asked the United States Department of Agriculture for a more detailed explanation of the recent Pilgrim’s Pride mass meat recall. Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency reported that the Russian Veterinary Service has filed an official inquiry to better understand the October 12 recall of more than 27 million pounds of ready-to-eat turkey and chicken.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE US Food and Drug Administration has moved to prevent a seller of dietary herbal products from marketing its products as recreational drugs. The FDA says it e-mailed Xoch Linnebank, a Dutch on-line seller of Yellow Jackets, warning it that promoting the pills as a "herbal ecstasy" is illegal.…

BY PHILIP FINE

WHILE it may seem that big brand names have been shut out of American confectionary shelves of health stores, in reality several multinational food giants have been very actively pursuing the organic foods sector, albeit through the back door.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE CHICAGO Board of Trade is being sued in the US District Court in Chicago for a 1989 decision that forced the owners of large amounts of soybean futures contracts to sell their positions. Farmer Harvey Joe Sanner is alleging that the Board knew its order would cause prices to drop, thereby benefiting the trading firm of one of its directors.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Trade Organisation has inaugurated new training facilities for developing country trade officials, a result of the Doha summit that led to the current so-called development trade round. There, governments agreed that officials from poorer countries needed assistance in grappling with complicated trade law talks, so they could play a full part in negotiations.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE CONCEPT of nation building is not new. Powerful governments have for centuries sought to create pliant political administrations which would do their bidding, without being directly under their control. It is, after all, in noone’s interest for a territory to descent into chaos.…

BY PHILIP FINE

HEINZ did something this year that its rival large USA-based food producers seem to be shying away from. They put their own name on an organic product.

One would think other US companies would have, by now, employed the same strategy as Heinz: use organic-friendly Europe as a test-market for an eventual US launch of an organic product, but the idea seems to be slow in catching on.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation has tried to scotch the claim that eating less meat in rich countries could help to reduce hunger in developing countries. Jelle Bruinsma, an editor of an FAO study looking ahead to 2030, says that the statement is erroneously based on the assumption that cereals used as animal feed would be freed up for human consumption in developing countries.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA and KEITH NUTHALL
CERAMIC manufacturers in Sri Lanka are seeking changes in national laws restricting the quarrying of paddy lands, because they contain premium deposits of kaolin. The country’s Ceramics Industry Task Force has asked its national government to revoke certain provisions of the Agrarian Development Act, which ban the mining of paddy lands, even if they are not being used for agriculture or have ceased to be viable for food production.…