Practical Guide to Metal Detection-Food Industry
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Food safety for all
After all the increased safety procedures put in place over the past decade, one might have been lulled into thinking that poisonings and deaths from food contamination would be rarer than before. While it is true that the new regulatory requirements and better processing techniques have helped, the continuing breakdowns in food safety are still worrying.
No avoiding sustainable sourcing
Food companies do not yet face the ethical sourcing equation of the clothing industry, where brands from Nike to Marks & Spencer cannot afford a single claim of sweat-shop production. But the moment is fast approaching for food, too, when exploitative sourcing will be the public relations kiss of death.
Putting a premium on substance over style
Food producers are flogging the term 'premium' for all it's worth, threatening to flood a market that relies on exclusivity for its success with well-packaged tat.
A hungry world needs a fit FAO
The crusade to end world hunger has been a bitter failure. But with the world set to sweep away a crooked food trading system, there is a chance to get it right - if only we could revive the FAO from dormancy.
Junk Food Babes
If education is meant to deliver knowledge and wise choices, why are we doing so little to educate our children about food?
McDonald's: facing fat
There is nothing so redolent of a corporate mid-life crisis as the strategic equivalent of a new car, new girl and new image, set firmly on the shoulders of the same old idea. McDonald's, it seems, is firmly in the throes of a mid-life crisis.
Food law: friend or foe?
The food industry is in danger of harming itself with its recent lobbying against the further harmonisation and deepening of EU food regulation.
The science behind food
The words clinical trial or scientifically proven on a label carry huge cachet. But behind the claims of scientific evidence, consumers expect a base level of rigour in ensuring thatfood or personal care products actually deliver the benefits they claim.
Private equity hot on food
Cash, cash, cash. Castigated as simple asset-strippers out to make a quick buck, the entrance of private equity onto the food industry stage has participants chattering in the wings.
Water wastage syndrome
Praise where praise is due. And it is certainly due for one small-time drinks firm in southern Britain, which is spear-heading answers to global water shortages that threaten to wreak havoc on food producers everywhere.
Waiting for the super-nutrition revolution
Henry Ford's famous aphorism that if he had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses, provides food makers with a lesson they must learn.
In food makers we trust?
In among the hollers about obesity and the concerns over nutrition, food companies now need to work hard to ensure they clinch public trust, as a matter of insurance. This means more than compliance on traceability and labeling. This means being seen as a force for good.
Turning food into trash
Water, we save. Energy, we conserve. But food, it seems, we can waste, junk and bin and no-one cares. Except one crusader, whose 20-year project has proven what should have been obvious in the first place: our attitude to food is costing us a fortune.
Making GI a quality mark
Whether it is a pork pie from Melton Mowbray or olive oil from Nimes, every Tom, Denis and Haemon seems to believe their local food deserves the EU's protection from big, bad corporations.
The business of food safety
One cannot envy the chief executive faced with a scientific study that casts doubt over the efficacy or safety of his core product. But avoiding a sales slump, media vilification and even charges of fraud means squaring up to such studies immediately.
A strategy for beating China
As Chinese producers move in on western markets, the first response by many established players is to protect and defend their previous market positions. It's a doomed strategy.
Let food be thy medicine
A society that views food as taste-bud entertainment rather than a basic of well-being was always bound to run into health problems. But with obesity now afflicting 300m people, and diabetes set to reach similar numbers within two decades, the problems borne of food abuse are emerging as more than a glitch. They amount to a profound loss of direction in our understanding of both food and medicine.
Food intolerance: a scientific void
It is time to draw on science to establish once and for all whether food intolerance is just a source of succour for hypochondriacs, or whether it is genuinely a modern scourge.
Claims, claims, claims
As lawyers circle the food and drink industry like a fatted calf, the first lesson for those preparing for defence is that it is not so much what you sell that matters, as how you sell it.
The Age of Consent for RFID
The image of secret radio chips planted inside the home from larder to bathroom, transmitting data freely to Corporation Inc, is enough to curl the toes of more than anti-capitalism activists.
Highway to health
Parked on the hot coals of public opinion, the food industry can lose no time in proving how healthy its products are.
Whining about wine
France is a fading power in the world of wine. And will continue to be, until it turns its face towards a globe where consumers buy what they know.
Time for a fair trade
The UK government must introduce a compulsory new supermarket code ofconduct if it is to make up for past mistakes and save the food industryfrom a spiral into anti-competitive practices.
