Swiss global manufacturer and marketer of precision instruments, Mettler Toledo, has created a guidebook for salt determination in food, in a bid to help food manufacturers rise to the challenge of controlling salt levels simply, quickly and accurately. Mettler Toledo produces precision instruments for use in industry, laboratory and retail settings. It has manufacturing facilities in the US, Germany, the UK, Switzerland and China, as well as sales and service departments in other countries, including... ...Read more »

The Senate Committee for Rural and Regional Affairs has released its recommendations from an inquiry into amendments proposed by the Greens to current Country of Origin Labelling laws. Although introduced by Greens Senator Christine Milne in 2012, the proposed Bill has been rejected by the Committee on which she serves, saying that the Bill, as currently drafted, should not be passed. Instead, the Committee has said the Government should consider developing a more effective country of origin labelling... ...Read more »

Data analysis is changing the way we manufacture food, track our diets and serve our dishes, having an impact on everything from food safety to trends in restaurants, according to US-based business analysis organisation Good Data. Writing on the Business2Community website, Good Data’s Ana Andreescu said the saying “you are what you eat” might have to be updated to “you analyse what you eat”. In the area of food safety, Andreescu said ‘big data’ is already being used by farmers to analyse... ...Read more »

A scheme that offered a health insurance rebate that lowers the cost for healthier supermarket foods, such as fruit and vegetables and wholegrain foods, has been successful in improving the diets of shoppers. The scheme also appears to have reduced the consumption of nutritionally less-desirable foods. The findings by the global research organisation, RAND Corporation, which are based on a scheme developed in South Africa, demonstrates an alternative to tackling nutritionally-poor dietary patterns.... ...Read more »

German scientists have developed a novel screening procedure that accurately determines the amount of animal, plant and microbial substances in foods. Almost all foodstuffs contain the genetic material of those animal and plant species that were used in their preparation. Researchers have adapted the latest techniques of DNA sequencing to determine precisely the levels of different substances in foods. In pilot studies, the researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) were able to use... ...Read more »

Australian supermarkets have been responding to growing consumer activism in favour of ‘sustainable’ fish and ‘free range’ eggs. The German-owned Australian ALDI supermarket group has announced that it will work with the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) to evaluate the sustainability of its seafood range in Australia. ALDI  says the partnership will enable it to develop programs and strategies to ensure the sustainability of the supply chain and meet its commitment to ‘source sustainably... ...Read more »

The world’s biggest ever study of food allergies, which is spearheaded by the University of Manchester and supported by industry players such as Unilever and Eurofins, began on Friday 22 March 2013. The €9million project builds on an earlier €14.3 million research study and will involve the world’s leading experts in the UK, Europe, Australia and US. Together they mark the biggest study of food allergy in the world. The European Commission-sponsored research, known as the Integrated Approaches... ...Read more »

The latest findings from global market research organisation Mintel suggests that the importance of ‘traceability’ has more than doubled for consumers in the UK following the horse meat scandal in January 2013. The research comes as more meat imported to the UK has been identified as horse meat. On Friday 22 March, the UK Food Standards Agency announced that Lancashire County Council had identified 100kg of horse meat imported from Hungary labelled as beef. In a report looking at provenance in... ...Read more »

Poultry manufacturer Luv-a-Duck Pty Ltd is being taken to the Federal Court of Australia by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The ACCC says the company’s claims that its ducks are ‘range reared and grain fed’ are false, misleading and deceptive. Luv-a-Duck claims on its packaging, website and brochures that its birds are ‘grown and grain fed in the spacious Victorian Wimmera Wheatlands’. But the ACCC alleges this is not true and that the ducks do not “have substantial... ...Read more »

Nestle Australia-owned Jenny Craig has assured its Australian consumers that there is no need to worry about horse meat in their ready-made weight loss meals. Jenny Craig Managing Director Amy Smith told Australian Food News today that there was no horse meat in its products, following news earlier this week that Nestle had found traces of horse meat in some other pasta brands sold in Italy and Spain. “In Australia and New Zealand, Jenny Craig sources 100 per cent of its red meat from Australia,”... ...Read more »