You are what you eat (and drink) - official
US biotech firms seek Euro partners
Getting safety tests right
Unilever plays the lo-carb card
EU seeks 4m euro IPR helpdesk
Asahi aim to boost sales 40%
Zeolite sieves CO2 particles from methane

Obesity

You are what you eat (and drink) - official

In a stunning attack of common sense, the US House of Representatives passed a bill effectively saying people are responsible for the results of eating too much and exercising too little.

The House passed a bill by 276 to 139 that bars customers from suing restaurants because their food makes them fat. The so-called Cheeseburger Bill stops overweight people blaming fast food chains like McDonalds. Formally known as the Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act, the bill won White House approval but it must still pass the Senate.

The US government said last week that obesity is catching up to tobacco as the top preventable cause of death.

Meanwhile, in Britain, legislators are taking a different view with respect to alcohol. They have threatened to fine hoteliers and bar staff that serve drunken customers and to crack down on those who serve underage drinkers.

A government report said “binge drinking”, particularly by the young, costs the UK GBP20bn a year. It wants to stop this but has so far refused to change Britain’s licensing laws, which anti-drinking experts say encourage binge drinking and excess consumption.

Other proposals include a ban on “happy hours”, health warnings on labels, a new advertising code and a 4% levy on the GBP200m/y spent on alcohol advertising, and a social responsibility charter for drinks producers.

Britain’s new budget this week raised the levy on a pint of beer by a penny and on a bottle of wine by four pennies. Very little is likely to go towards treating alcohol-related problems.

The BBC quotes Lesley King-Lewis, chief executive of Action on Addiction, saying alcohol services are hugely under-funded.

"Only £95m a year is spent on alcohol services, compared to £500m for drugs," she said.

Biotech

US biotech firms seek Euro partners

Several California biotech firms will seek to impress potential European partners at a public meeting in San Francisco next week.

The meeting, co-sponsored by French and German trade bodies among others, will hear presentations from mainly drug discovery tool companies looking for further capital investment, distribution, and/or manufacturing deals with pharma, biotech and investor firms. They include

• Target Discovery, a discovery biology company that seeks to alleviate critical bottlenecks imposed by current technologies upon drug development and life science research

• Valentis, which combines the proprietary delivery technologies with genes to create novel therapeutic products

• Corgentech, which is into discovery, development and commercialisation of a new class of therapeutics that treat human diseases by regulating gene expression.

Details from Clarisse Bollaro at the French-American Chamber of Commerce at T +1 415 398 2449 or E webmaster@faccsf.org.

Food safety

Getting safety tests right

British research house CCFRA has published a practical new guide for daily use to help microbiologists assess the reliability of results from microbiological analyses of food, raw materials, ingredients and environmental samples. 

Its easy-to-follow, step-by-step approach was developed by an industrial group of microbiologists and data analysts. The guide includes a spreadsheet to do the necessary mathematics and addresses the ISO 17025 requirements to identify and estimate all components of uncertainty.

Details from http://www.campden.co.uk/publ/pubfiles/g47.htm.

Launches

Unilever plays the lo-carb card

Drawn by a market of 50m Americans on low carbohydrate diets, Unilever Bestfoods’s US division is to almost double its Carb Options line of sauces, marinades, salad dressings, peanut spread, bars and shakes.

The new products include Hellman's Ketchup, Lipton Green Tea and Instant Noodle Soup, Ragu Hearty Italian-Style Sauce with Sausage, and Skippy Chunky Peanut Spread.

Unilever Bestfoods marketing vice president Lisa Klauser said "The positive feedback we've seen (on Carb Options) from consumers and retailers has exceeded our expectations."

IPR

EU seeks 4m euro IPR helpdesk

The European Commission has budgeted four million euros for an intellectual property rights helpdesk to help local researchers exploit their discoveries.

The helpdesk is part of the EC’s Sixth Framework Programme (FP6). The contract involves helping potential and current contractors taking part in Community-funded R&D projects with finance and exploitation issues as well as diffusion and protection rules and intellectual property in community research projects.

The EC wants to see tools such as a website, a helpline, newsletters and other appropriate information and dissemination material, awareness raising and training actions. Deadline is 16 June 2004. Details from http://fp6.cordis.lu/fp6/call_details.cfm?CALL_ID=130.

Briefly

Asahi aim to boost sales 40%

Asahi Food & Healthcare says its new 600 million yen factory in Ibaraki Prefecture will help to boost healthcare product sales by more than 40% this year. The 1,200m² plant complies with GMP (good manufacturing practice) requirements and manufactures drug and supplement products.

Zeolite sieves CO2 particles from methane

Japanese ceramic firm NGK Insulators has developed zeolite membranes that can sieve molecular, nano-size micropores. Zeolite membranes are formed by a hydrothermal synthesis process on a porous ceramic substrate to a thickness of about 5 mm. Using this new product, NGK has isolated carbon dioxide from a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide.

Zeolite membranes have oval-shaped micropores measuring 0.36 x 0.44 nm (1 nm = 1/1,000,000,000 of a meter). While carbon dioxide molecules pass through the micropores, larger molecules are blocked.

Zeolite is a silicate mineral composed of silicon, aluminium, and sodium. These elements combine three-dimensionally to form a mesh-like crystal structure presenting molecular-size micropores of about 0.3 to 0.8 nm that allow smaller particles to pass.

The new membranes resist pressure, heat, and chemicals. This makes them suitable in natural gas refining plants and in biogas plants that generate biogas from raw garbage using methane fermentation.