The event was an unmitigated success, welcoming 1012 visitors who left the show impressed and vowing to return in 2011.
SAO PAULO, June 30 /PRNewswire/ — A total success. That sums up the Health ingredients (Hi) South America Summit, held for the first time on June 15-16, 2009 at Sao Paulo’s Novotel Centre Norte. The international conference and tabletop exhibition welcomed over 1000 key decision-makers in the food industry, in this, its inaugural edition.
The Summit’s organizer, UBM Brazil, reports that 323 of the visitors attended the conference program, which consisted of …

The Centre for Food Safety found 15 out of 6,000 food samples tested in May to be unsatisfactory, mainly involving excessive or illegal use of food preservatives or colourings or metal contamination. The overall satisfactory rate was 99.7%.
 
It tested vegetables, fruit, meat, poultry, aquatic products, milk, milk products, frozen confections, cereals and grains.
 
Apart from the eight unsatisfactory food samples announced earlier, a Spanish sausage sample was also found to contain sorbic acid while a fresh beef sample contained sulphur dioxide. Three fresh oyster samples contained excessive cadmium.
 
A Chinese red bun …

Amid the recent debate on fire standards for wood, plastic and composite pallets used in warehousing, a side issue arose that has further fanned the longstanding debate between wood and plastic pallet providers. A group of man-made flame retardants called polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs is drawing criticism from some consumer activists, scientists and regulators.
            PBDEs can be found everywhere from consumer electronics and textiles to human breast milk to Arctic seals and local shorelines. Two forms were voluntarily phased out in 2005 due to toxicity concerns. A third formulation, …

Rockville, Md., June 29, 2009 — As Viet Nam’s industrial capabilities have developed rapidly in recent decades, government officials have recognized the importance of helping to secure the nation’s supply of medicines. In an important milestone addressing this need, the Vietnamese Pharmacopoeia Commission (VPC) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Pharmacopeial (USP) Convention. USP is a scientific nonprofit organization that sets standards for the identity and quality of prescription and over-the-counter drugs that are enforced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the United States. …

Although President Barack Obama recently gave the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority over tobacco marketing, most of the changes won’t be seen until next year, according to Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Within the next 12 months, larger warning labels will be required on all smokeless tobacco packages and advertisements, and descriptors such as “light” or “mild” will be prohibited. Tobacco manufacturers can no longer sponsor athletic or cultural events, and advertising in most magazines and at the point of sale must be printed in black and white.
But the law is …

There are many reasons that some people choose to shop and eat a completely organic range of foods, but the primary reason seems to center around the additives in various non-organic food items. Those additives have been studied and linked to various diseases, and instead of taking the chance that unhealthy preservatives and flavorings might be integrated into grocery store items, people often opt for the strictly organic route so as to avoid them altogether.
But everyone cannot afford the prices of organic foods or the time it takes to shop …

CHICAGO – (Business Wire) The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) gathered in Anaheim, CA from June 6-9 to learn about innovative new food and beverage products launched around the globe. Leading market research company, Mintel, had close to 100 products on display that represented three trend categories of sweeteners, purity and functional foods. Following daily presentations, the products were used in a taste test, where attendees tasted the products and voted on their favorites.
“It’s always exciting to see the outcome of the taste tests, but with so many unique products …

 Wine making can be an enjoyable hobby. You get to make your own flavor of wines and at the same time appreciate the process of making it. Wine making can be difficult at first just like anything that you are engaged to. You just have to get the right equipments and the right ingredients before you can perfect the whole process. Patience is also needed when you want to engage yourself in wine making. The process of making wines is really long due to the fermentation of the fruit. Since …

GUANGZHOU: More than half of the beverages, tissues and women’s sanitary products on sale in the markets of Guangdong province are “substandard”, with a number of them even “dangerous to consumers’ health”, tests conducted by authorities on over 200 products showed.
The provincial administration bureau of industry and commerce conducted tests on 202 products of beverages, bottled water, tissues and sanitary products, and found that only “49 percent” of them met the government’s hygiene standard during the manufacturing process, said Xiao Yangwu, director of the bureau’s consumer’s rights protection office.
However, the …

By DEAN P. JONES, PhD
• Professor of medicine, Emory University School of Medicine, and director of the Emory Clinical Biomarkers Laboratory.
Supplements that claim to help maintain healthy memory, alertness, immune function, protection from infection, healthy joints, youthful vigor, etc., offer many options for consumers to help manage their own health. They also raise questions about effectiveness and possible side effects.
Some history: The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, enacted by Congress in 1994, defined “dietary supplement” and allowed manufacturers to make claims about a product’s ability to affect the structure …