Food News
Colorado prepares to regulate the plant like any other food ingredient
The Cannabist | Posted on April 30, 2018With the stroke of a pen, hemp could be treated like any other food ingredient under Colorado law. A bill is on its way to Gov. John Hickenlooper’s desk to apply existing food manufacturing guidelines to products such as hemp oil-infused coffee and CBD-rich extracts made from the non-psychoactive cannabis plant variety. At its simplest form, House Bill 1295 — which unanimously passed the Colorado Senate on Wednesday — merely codifies a state policy and program in place since July. In a broader context, Colorado’s buttoning up of regulations is a novel move to protect the state’s emerging industrial hemp industry as the plant’s legality is debated federally. The regulatory red tape wasn’t seen as a burden by a few Colorado businesses that make products from industrial hemp.
AquaBounty Technologies, Inc. Announces FDA Approval of First U.S. Facility for Commercial Production of AquAdvantage Salmon
Globe News Wire | Posted on April 30, 2018AquaBounty Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq:AQB) (“AquaBounty” or the “Company”), a biotechnology company focused on enhancing productivity in the aquaculture market and a majority-owned subsidiary of Intrexon Corporation (NYSE:XON), today announces that it has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to raise AquAdvantage® Salmon at its land-based contained facility near Albany, Indiana. The FDA previously approved AquaBounty’s New Animal Drug Application (NADA) on November 19, 2015, for the production, sale, and consumption of AquAdvantage Salmon in the United States. That approval specified that all production facilities for the product would require separate site-specific approvals. To conform with this requirement, the Company submitted a supplementary NADA to the FDA requesting approval to grow AquAdvantage Salmon at its farm site near Albany, Indiana. The Indiana facility as currently configured has a production capacity of 1200 tons per year and was designed to allow significant expansion. With the facility now approved, commercial production of AquAdvantage Salmon awaits only official labeling guidelines by the FDA.
France says ‘watch your language’ on vegetarian food with ‘meat’ names
Meatingplace (free registration required) | Posted on April 25, 2018French legislators are warning food companies that describe their vegetarian or vegan foods using terms usually associated with meat to find new ways to label such products to prevent consumer confusion. The French parliament has banned the use of such terms as “steak,” sausage,” “burger,” “fillet,” “ham slices” and “chicken” when marketing foods that have no animal protein in them, such as “vegetarian sausages” and "vegan bacon.” The new provisions — which also include dairy alternatives like soy and tofu products marketed as “milk” or “butter” — were sparked by a European Court of Justice ruling last year specifically barring the dairy alternative names
Plant-based protein coalition fights back on label challenge
Meatingplace (free registration required) | Posted on April 25, 2018A group of companies at the forefront of the plant-based protein movement is pushing back against calls by the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association (USCA) and others to change how they label their products. The Good Food Institute (GFI) is among those asking USDA to reject a petition from USCA urging the agency to limit the terms “beef” and “meat” to products made from slaughtered cattle, versus those originating from plants. GFI and its partners contend that USCA’s action is an attempt to reduce competition from a growing lineup of plant-based protein products and foods made from animal cells, or “clean meat.”In a letter to USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), GFI said the USCA proposal asks the agency to go beyond its statutory authority because the label designations would not actually protect consumers.
EU moves to ban sale of lower-quality branded food in eastern Europe
The Guardian | Posted on April 19, 2018Brussels wants to make it illegal for food and drink multinationals to sell inferior versions of well-known brands to customers in eastern Europe, after studies suggested hundreds of products were involved in the practice. An EU directive banning so-called “dual food” was announced on Wednesday following longstanding complaints from member states in central and eastern Europe. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, HiPP baby food, Birds Eye, Lidl and Spar have denied accusations of selling lower quality goods in the east bearing identical branding to products sold in western Europe. Persil and Ariel have been accused of selling a less effective washing product formula in eastern Europe, a claim they also refute. The European commission will next month provide member states with a methodology for testing multinational brands, so that the real culprits can be identified.
GAO to USDA: Take further action to reduce pathogens in meat
Meatingplace (free registration required) | Posted on April 19, 2018The GAO said USDA has developed standards limiting the amount of salmonella and campylobacter permitted in certain meat and poultry, such as ground beef, pork carcasses and chicken breasts. But it has not developed standards for other products that are widely available, such as turkey breasts and pork chops. Further, USDA's process for deciding which products to consider for new standards is unclear because it is not fully documented, which is not consistent with federal standards for internal control, GAO said.
2018 a year for lots of meat
Brownfield Ag News | Posted on April 18, 2018Lower prices for producers on nearly every type of meat are forecast by USDA for this year which means lower prices for consumers. The reason is bigger supplies of almost every type of meat. “We’ve got beef, pork, broilers increasing production year over year,” says Seth Meyer, USDA Outlook Board Chairman. Meyers says turkey production is the only exception, down just a little. Meyers says overall meat production this year should be higher by more than 3%. And that translates to lower prices for most livestock producers.
Montana residents fight proposed multi-species plant
Meatingplace (free registration required) | Posted on April 18, 2018Hundreds of residents in Great Falls, Mont., gathered on Saturday night to voice concerns about a proposal to build a large multi-species slaughter facility in the area. Canadian company Friesen Foods, having purchased 3,000 acres of undeveloped farmland in the area, has proposed to build the “Madison Food Park.” The facility, as the company has described, would be a state-of-the-art, robotically controlled, environmentally friendly, multi-species food processing plant for cattle, pigs and chickens and related further processing facilities for beef, pork and poultry.
After research, flavored milk returns to some schools
Hoard's Dairyman | Posted on April 13, 2018While local school boards, Parent Teacher Associations, and most recently the Trump administration weigh in on food served in schools, the dialogue around flavored milk is more multifaceted than in years past. There is opportunity for both plain and flavored milk in schools. Once scrutinized for its sugar content, flavored milk is now being viewed for its role in overall health, academic achievement, and — most recently — food waste reduction.Flavored milk has all of the major nutrients found in plain milk — including calcium, vitamin D, and potassium, which are all underconsumed nutrients of concern according to the most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
Missouri bills: If it comes from a lab, it’s not meat
Watt Ag Net | Posted on April 12, 2018As the sale of cell-cultured foods become closer to a reality, lawmakers in Missouri want to protect its livestock and poultry producers. If you don’t know what cell-cultured foods are, another name to which I have heard them referred is laboratory-grown meat. However, the latter name is exactly what the legislators don’t want to hear or seen used in the Show Me State.Bills in both the state’s Senate and House of Representatives have been proposed that if passed, would prohibit companies from advertising and promoting those products as meat.Rep. Jeff Knight has proposed Missouri HB 2607, while Sen. Sandy Crawford has proposed Missouri SB 977. The bills are identical, and read as follows: “Currently, no person advertising, offering for sale, or selling a carcass shall engage in any misleading or deceptive practice including misrepresenting the cut, grade, brand or trade name, or weight or measure of any product. This act also prohibits misrepresenting a product as meat that is not derived from harvested production livestock or poultry.”