Food Articles
GLOBAL DAIRY OUTLOOK POSITIVE REVEALS THE WORLD DAIRY SITUATION REPORT 2011
GLOBAL DAIRY OUTLOOK POSITIVE REVEALS THE WORLD DAIRY SITUATION REPORT 2011 The World Dairy Situation Report 2011, IDF’s flagship publication, will be presented during the Dairy Policies and Economics conference at the IDF World Dairy Summit in Parma, Italy, on Monday 17 October. This comprehensive report is considered an essential resource by the global dairy community. It investigates major developments, new trends, and the evolution of the demand for dairy products, as well as gathering statistics on production, consumption and trade in all regions of the world. The IDF World Dairy Situation 2011 has built on the improvements made last year to make it even more usable and relevant to decision-makers and dairy sector stakeholders concerned with the continuously changing global dairy market conditions. This year’s report showed some very positive developments: “The economic recovery experienced in 2010 meant a boost to the worldwide demand for dairy products, resulting in major volume increases for most products traded around the globe”, explained Adriaan Krijger, editor of the publication. Another important conclusion is the influence of developing markets on global dairy trade: “Consumption of food is growing most rapidly in developing markets, due to population and income growth. The dairy sector is benefiting significantly, and the growth in demand for dairy products continues to be one of the strongest of the major commodity groups.” This updated edition is the result of close collaboration between experts and key organisations around the globe and within the IDF. The World Dairy Situation report is available in electronic form. For more information, visit www.fil-idf.org. Agro-waste could provide nano-fibres for probiotics encapsulation
Agro-waste could provide nano-fibres for probiotics encapsulation Waste fibres from the agricultural and food processing industry could be used for the nano-encapsulation of bioactives such as probiotics, according to new research. The study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, explored the potential for using soluble dietary fibre from agro-wastes such as okara (soybean solid waste), oil palm trunk, and oil palm frond (leaf and foliage) for the nano-encapsulation of the probiotic Lactobacillus acidophilus. “In view of sustainable development, there is aggressive research in transforming the high-volume wastes which cause disposal and environmental problems to natural resources for the production of sustainable products, such as liquid bio-fuel, fertilizer, fodder, and even human food products,” said the research team, led by Min-Tze Liong, from the School of Industrial Technology at the Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia. “To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the potential of agro-waste fibres as functional nano-materials, which may provide some indications for a potential alternative encapsulation technique for the selected beneficial bacteria,” they added. Waste products Liong and colleagues noted that oil palm and soybean are the two largest oil crop commodities in the world, cumulatively contributing more than half of the world’s total oil production of 163.9 million tonnes in 2009. “The expansion of these commodities is resulting in overproduction of biomass wastes, because only a small fraction of the plants is commercially valuable,”they explained. The authors said that around 90 per cent of the oil palm is made up of trunk, leaf (frond), and other fibrous wastes which contain large amounts of soluble fibres such as lignin, cellulose, and hemicelluloses. They added that okara, the main solid waste from soy- and tofu-processing industries, contains up to 49 per cent total dietary fibre. Liong and co-workers suggested that such waste could be used in the production of other food and nutraceutical products in order to reduce waste production in the food industry. Encapsulation The authors noted that the incorporation of the beneficial bacteria is often challenged with the preservation of viability during processing, storage, and gastrointestinal transit. Previous researchers have used encapsulation techniques to enhance the delivery of probiotics into the gut. The authors said that the use of nano-encapsulation techniques may offer many advantages compared to other encapsulation methods. They added that biopolymers that are biocompatible, biodegradable, and nontoxic “are favoured for nano-encapsulation of bioactives for food and biomedical applications.” The new study built on a previous study suggesting that agrowastes from oil palm and soybean contained dietary fibers that could be spun into nanofibers using electrospinning technology, by developing and evaluating an agrowaste-based nanofiber encapsulation of the probiotic Lactobacillus acidophilus. The research team produced nanofibres from the soluble dietary fibre fractions of okara and oil palm which showed “good potential as a nano-encapsulant for probiotics.” “Viability studies showed good bacterial survivability of 78.6–90 per cent under electrospinning conditions and retained viability at refrigeration temperature during the 21 day storage study,” said Liong and colleagues. Source: Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry FDA: We’ll publish FSMA foreign supplier verification rules ‘soon’
FDA: We’ll publish FSMA foreign supplier verification rules ‘soon’ Post a commentBy Elaine Watson, 17-Jan-2012 Related topics: Food safety, Regulation The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has missed its January 4 deadline for publishing details of how it will regulate imported food under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), but says it will update the industry “soon”.
Asked when it would publish rulemaking on its proposed Foreign Supplier Verification Program, come up with a definition of ‘high-risk foods’ and outline the associated certification scheme, a spokesman told FoodNavigator-USA: “The specifics of these programs are being developed now. “Congress set a deadline for the regulations for the Foreign Supplier Verification Program at one year after the law was signed [January 4, 2011] - so we hope to release the proposed regulation soon, though I cannot speculate on when. “The high risk foods have not been defined yet. The process for certification of foods is yet to be defined as well.” He added: “Congress set a deadline for the 3rd party audit program for imports at two years after signing - so that would be next January. The voluntary qualified importer program (VQIP) would follow after that.” Devil is in the detail Quite how the foreign supplier verification scheme will work in practice was a source of much consternation in the trade, said Benjamin England, founder of legal practice Benjamin L. England & Associates and consultancy FDAImports.com. According to the FDA, the scheme will “require importers to verify that their suppliers are in compliance with reasonably appropriate risk-based preventive controls that provide the same level of public health protection as those required under FSMA”. But the devil would be in the detail, he said. “The FDA seems to be basing its thinking on an assumption of bilateral trade – whereas in fact most is multilateral. If you are importing chocolate from China, but the highest risk ingredient in it – the dairy protein – is in turn being imported by the Chinese company from New Zealand, the trail is dead in China. “Far better that the FDA should pump all available resources into the VQIP - which I see as a kind of frequent traveler pass for trusted players to expedite entry into the US of imported food from eligible, qualified importers.” Re-examination fees: Food import user fee by the back door? Under FSMA, FDA can now charge food importers a fee (based upon an hourly rate of $224 or $325 if foreign travel is required) for any ‘re-examination’ required because FDA discovered a problem during an initial examination, noted England. While this seemed eminently reasonable, he said, FDA has such a broad definition of what constitutes the ‘first examination’ that “virtually every imported food shipment detained for an apparent food safety reason will become subject to a re-examination fee”. For example, FDA’s ‘first examination’ definition includes tasks and operations that “clearly do not involve any FDA inspection of the imported food at all, such as reviewing sample results from a third party, reviewing any relevant epidemiological evidence, reviewing a third party facility inspection, and almost any activity related to an FDA import alert”, he claimed “FDA could not convince Congress to give the agency a food importation user fee so FDA made one up out of the re-examination fee language of FSMA… FDA appears to be looking at this fee requirement as a simple means to capture additional operational funds through a user fee system rejected by Congress in other food safety bills.” Queensland Flood Crisis: Guidance for Business Recovery
For more information please visit: http://www.australiannaturaltherapistsassociation.com.au/news/archive/2011/item_0193.php |
