The world’s largest coffee chain, Starbucks Coffee Company, announced today plans to introduce wine, beer and “premium food” to a handful of its stores in the United States by the end of 2012. Starbucks stores in Atlanta, California and Chicago, have been “carefully selected” in response to “customer feedback for more options to relax in the evenings” for the new menu additions. These stores, along with several others recently announced for the Chicago area, will be the first stores... ...Read more »

Latest figures from Australia’s Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry show that the volume of beef exported to Japan during 2011 was the lowest since 2003. Japan is the largest destination of Australian beef exports. Australia sent 30,202 tonnes of beef to Japan in December 2011, taking the annual total to 342,186 tonnes. This was four per cent less than the amount exported in 2010. According to Meat & Livestock Australia, Australian beef exports have been impacted by the... ...Read more »

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine, in the United States, claim to have identified a human receptor that can detect fat – irrespective of taste. Their research suggests that some people may be more sensitive to the presence of fat in foods. The researchers found that people with a particular variant of the CD36 gene are far more sensitive to the presence of fat than others. Their study is available online in the Journal of Lipid Research. The researchers studied 21 people... ...Read more »

The Australian Government’s Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) has defended itself following media reports on a US ban on certain uses of a class of antibiotic in livestock. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an order on 4 January 2012 prohibiting certain uses of the cephalosporin class of antimicrobial drugs in cattle, swine, chickens and turkeys effective 5 April 2012. Antibiotic use in animals is a potential problem for human medicine because antibiotic resistance... ...Read more »

A team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center and Columbia University have estimated that a nationwide tax on sweetened beverages in the U.S. would prevent nearly 26,000 deaths each year. Their research was based on the findings of previous U.S. research which estimated that a ‘penny-per-ounce’ tax would reduce consumption of sweetened beverages by 15 per cent over a decade. However, it appears the authors of the later study have... ...Read more »

A newly-published study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta has shown the cost of excessive alcohol consumption in the United States in 2006 reached US$223.5 billion, or about US$1.90 per drink. Almost three–quarters of these costs were due to binge drinking, consuming four or more alcoholic beverages per occasion for women or five or more drinks per occasion for men, the report said. Excessive alcohol consumption, or heavy drinking, is defined by the CDC as “consuming... ...Read more »

According to a report from Australian food law specialists FoodLegal, Australian beverage and food companies will need to watch closely what emerges from a recent American lawsuit. Foodlegal has reported that parents of a 13-year-old girl from Maryland, USA, have filed a lawsuit against Nestle USA, manufacturer of ‘Deer Park’ and ‘Poland Spring’ bottled waters with added fluoride, and also against Gerber Products Company, which manufactures baby food and infant formula products containing... ...Read more »

After 10 years of negotiations, U.S. cherries can now be exported to Western Australia, making cherries the first U.S. fresh fruit to gain access to that market. U.S. cherries from California have been common in the eastern states of Australia since the late 1990s as the states of Washington and Oregon have been permitted to export to the eastern Australian states since 2001. Since that time, negotiations have been ongoing between Biosecurity Australia and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to... ...Read more »

A farm in Colorado, U.S., is recalling cantaloupe melons it sold this summer out of concern they may be contaminated with Listeria, a deadly bacteria. At least 15 persons infected with the outbreak strain of Listeria monocytogenes had been reported from four American states. All illnesses started on or after 15 August 2011. Listeriosis is a serious infection usually caused by eating food contaminated with the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is working... ...Read more »

New standards for reducing the prevalence of salmonella and campylobacter in young chickens and turkeys are being implemented in the United States. The US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is acting on base-line studies that indicated American consumers are still being exposed to pathogens in poultry. After two years of enforcement, the FSIS estimates that the new standards will prevent approximately 5,000 cases of campylobacter-caused illnesses and... ...Read more »