Biotech discovers 25,000 year-old secret
Currying favour with doctors?
NFPA welcomes ‘your fault’ bill, seeks hand-out

Sleeve label is biodegradeable
NSB seeks $19 billion/y
UK firms reject RFID

Biotech discovers 25,000 year-old secret

A fermentation process developed over 25,000 years ago by Africa's Bushmen shares advanced technological principles with today's biotechnology, reports The Alchemist.

Researchers at Rhodes University have shown that traditional production of IQhilika, a golden mead produced from fermented honey and the roots of a succulent herb known as imoela, conforms to the best modern biotechnological practice.

IQhilika promotes well-being and is said to be an aphrodisiac. After five years of scientific investigation, the Makahana Meadery now produces it under commercial conditions using

a tower fermentor to yield a 13% alcohol (ethanol) mead in 79 minutes. The researchers claim this is a record for this type of fermentation, which normally takes months to reach this alcohol level because of the low level of nutrients in honey. “There are also no measurable contaminant alcohols in the mead. This is a possible scientific basis for the traditional belief that iQhilika leaves no hangover,” say the researchers turned entrepreneurs, Winston Leukes and Garth Cambray.

Ingredients

Currying favour with doctors?

New research has confirmed traditional use of curcumin, the main active ingredient in the curry spice turmeric, as a household anti-inflammatory remedy. They now suggest it may stop or reverse some types of cancer, says Kelly Galin, runner-up of the 2003 International Young Chemistry Writer of the Year Competition, writing in The Alchemist.

Researchers are increasingly interested in curcumin's ability to fight cancer because it is safe, has few or no side effects, and can be taken orally.

Curcumin is a phenolic natural product isolated from the rhizome of the leafy plant Curcuma longa (turmeric), a spice that give curries and rice that characteristic yellow-orange colour. It is closely related to ginger.

Pharmacologically, curcumin is an irreversible inhibitor of aminopeptidase N (APN), an enzyme that plays a key role in tumour invasion and angiogenesis. APN breaks apart proteins at the cell's surface, offering cancer cells help invading nearby cells. Angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels, is essential for tumour growth and the transmission of cancerous cells from the original site to new ones. Past studies have shown that curcumin can stop angiogenesis. As a result, the National Cancer Institute is doing Phase I clinical trials for cancer chemoprevention using curcumin. They believe it may help fight breast cancer, colon cancer, stomach cancer, and even blood cancer. There is also evidence it may also aid the battle against Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, and even radiation burns.

Food laws

NFPA welcomes ‘your fault’ bill, seeks hand-out

The US food industry has threatened to pass on the cost of meeting the latest security-inspired food safety laws, but welcomed an act that exonerates its efforts to get people to eat more.

The US National Food Processors Association welcomed the markup and approval of the Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act by the House Judiciary Committee. The act puts responsibility for overconsumption squarely on consumers’ shoulders.

NFPA boss John Cady said the act will protect the food industry from liability claims that food products are responsible for causing weight gain or obesity in consumers.  “It is a timely and needed response to the threat of lawsuits seeking to pin the responsibility for obesity in this country on the food industry. Lawsuits against food companies are absolutely the wrong way to address the issue of obesity.”  The US Surgeon-General says two-thirds of Americans are overweight and 15% are clinically obese.

Cady added “We need to start helping consumers understand how they can balance their food choices in order to create a healthful diet.  We also must help them to understand that a lack of physical activity in the lives of many Americans - adults and children - is having a serious negative impact on their health.”

However, nutrition academics like New York University’s Marion Nestle have castigated the food and beverage industry for promoting an eat-more culture. According to Nestle, the fastest way to slim Americans would be to break their carbonated soft drink habit of over 200 litres/y.

However, Cady gave short shrift to a White House proposal in the 2005 Federal Budget to impose "user fees" on food processing plants regulated by the US Department of Agriculture.

"User fees are new and regressive federal food taxes that would be passed on to those who can least afford them, in the form of higher food prices,” he said. “This regulation should be paid for from appropriated funds.” Not doing so threatened to undermine public confidence in food safety programmes, he added.

Sustainability

Sleeve label is biodegradeable

A biodegradable linerless sleeve labelling system suitable for ready meal, poultry and meat, pasta and other non-food packs makes an eye-catching and cost-effective alternative to traditional cartons and labels. 

The developer of the SE Sleeve, Skanem Newcastle, is part of the Scandinavian-owned pan-European packaging group Skanem. A year after launch, it has 60 customers and also attracted interest from the US and Australia.

Skanem Newcastle's marketing and reprographics manager Alan Quinn says "To our knowledge, the SE Sleeve is the first completely biodegradable, linerless paperboard sleeving system that can be applied to the pack in up to five different locations - top only, top and side, top, side and base, top and two sides and full 360 'pod' style.”

Skanem Newcastle worked with silicone, glue and paperboard suppliers to ensure the sleeves would withstand the low temperatures and moisture experienced by products stored in, and sold from chiller cabinets or freezers.

Education

NSB seeks $19 billion/y

The US National Science Board (NSB) says it needs $19 billion a year to reverse the decline in US science and engineering students and to expand its technology development programmes.

In a letter accompanying the report to Congress, NSB chairman Warren Washington said the recommendations "are provided at a very broad level and assume full implementation of the Congressionally authorised increase in NSF's budget to $9.8 billion in FY07."

Further, the letter says, "the report estimates that approximately $19 billion would be required to fully address all unmet needs…and ensure continued US leadership in the international science, engineering and technology enterprise."

An online version of the report is available at www.nsf.gov/nsb.

Logistics

UK firms reject RFID

British food and beverage firms risk losing out on the supply chain efficiencies made possible by radio frequency identification technology, says e.centre, a British RFID promotion body.

Its research shows 85% of UK companies have no plans to introduce RFID, even though most of them agree that it is a “beneficial technology”. A poll conducted by e.centre last summer among some FMCG retailers found 40% planned to use RFID by 2005.

Theoretically, RFID allows any trading partner to trace a product pack anywhere in the supply chain. But some consumer groups believe that suppliers will extend this capability into the homes, and breach privacy rules.

A not for profit organisation, e.centre will launch EPCglobal, a single, global, open standard for the technology, in the UK in Spring 2004. It claims this will remove the final stumbling block to the technology's integration with bar coding and other business-to-business communications.