Food News
In sudden turnaround, regulators suspend new rules for New Jersey's craft breweries
North Jersey | Posted on October 4, 2018State alcohol regulators suspended enforcement of new rules for New Jersey's craft breweries after top lawmakers vowed to roll them back in a flurry of critical statements.The state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, or ABC, said in a statement that the pause would allow it to further consult with the competing factions — craft breweries on one side and bars and restaurants on the other — and potentially work with lawmakers to write new legislation.“We want to make sure that we get this right,” said ABC Director David Rible. “We are committed to supporting the state’s growing craft beer industry, while also balancing the concerns of other stakeholders and ensuring compliance with state law.”Gov. Phil Murphy, who had expressed misgivings about the rules after an outcry from the craft beer industry last week, celebrated the announcement on Twitter."I applaud today’s decision and look forward to continuing to support our vibrant craft beer industry," he wrote. The regulations in question were issued Sept. 21 by the state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control and sought to clarify what breweries can and cannot do under a 2012 state law aimed at spurring the growth of New Jersey's craft beer industry. Previous guidance was murky or incomplete, causing “significant confusion” about what was permissible, the division said.The rules contained new restrictions, most significantly limiting breweries to hosting 25 events and 52 private parties a year. But they also gave the beer makers new privileges, such as allowing them to host up to 12 off-premises events annually. Breweries were prohibited from selling food, but consumers could bring their own food into tasting rooms.
Chipotle Must Face Class Trial Over ‘GMO-Free’ Deception Claims
Bloomberg | Posted on October 3, 2018Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. customers in Maryland, California, and New York head for trial in a class suit alleging the fast-casual restaurant chain deceptively markets food as GMO-free. A ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, which certified three separate classes and denied the company’s motion to throw out the case, was notable in important areas of class action and consumer law.The ruling “was without a doubt a victory for Chipotle consumers,” Laurence D, King of Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer LLP in San Francisco., one of their attorneys, told Bloomberg Law.“Plaintiffs have maintained from the outset that Chipotle’s ‘non-GMO’ campaign was false and misleading, he said.
Austin, Texas, Now Requires Restaurants To Responsibly Dispose Of Food Waste
Huffington Post | Posted on October 3, 2018The Texas city of Austin implemented a new ordinance this week preventing restaurants from disposing of food waste in landfills.Restaurants may donate unconsumed food, send scraps to farms or compost it under the law that took effect Oct. 1. The measure also stipulates that employees receive training about handling the waste. “The City is committed to helping companies, large and small, find cost-effective solutions and establish diversion programs to ensure food and other organics are put to best use while meeting ordinance requirements,” Sam Angoori, interim director of Austin Resource Recovery, an organization helping businesses sustainably transform food waste, said Monday.Austin, the Texas state capital, decided to focus on restaurants after a 2015 study determined that more than 85 percent of trash and recycling came from commercial businesses, multifamily properties and the food service industry. The study showed 37 percent of what ended up in landfills is organic waste that is compostable. The new law bolsters the city’s goal of zero waste by 2040. In addition to encouraging food donation and composting, the plan calls for expanded recycling and economic development.
Who Shops at a Mature Farmers’ Market?
Choices | Posted on October 3, 2018Growth in the number of farmers’ markets is slowing. As of August 2017, there were 8,687 markets, double the number from 10 years ago but only a 0.2% growth from the previous year (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2018), indicating that growth in the number of markets has leveled off. Many parts of the country, particularly in urban areas, are witnessing a saturation of farmers’ markets. Producers complain that maintaining a presence at multiple markets has increased costs more than it has added revenues (Zepeda and Reznickova, 2018). These vendors question whether adding markets increases the number of shoppers or just makes it more convenient for those customers currently shopping at farmers’ markets. With the number of farmers’ markets leveling off, what do we know about the shoppers who visit these established, mature markets? What are they buying? What are impediments to further growth? We conducted a survey of shoppers at one of the oldest and largest producer-only farmers’ markets in the country to find out.Visitors to the DCFM are not “average” food shoppers. While their incomes are higher than the U.S. average (31% have household income above $96,000, compared to 20% of U.S. households), the characteristic that most distinguishes them is that they are far more educated than the average American. They are twice as likely to have completed a bachelor’s degree (77% vs. 32% of U.S. population) and more than three times as likely to have completed a graduate or professional degree (38% vs. 12%). The average age is somewhat younger: just under 46 years old, versus 50 years for the U.S. population. Household size of DCFM visitors is smaller than the U.S. average (2 vs.2.5 people), but the proportion of children under 18 is similar (20% vs. 21%). Since the University of Wisconsin-Madison has 45,000 students, it should not be surprising that shoppers at the DCFM are highly educated, young, and have small households and few children. While these shoppers may not be similar to the average US shopper, they are reflective of the residents in the town where the farmers’ market is located. These results are consistent with Aguirre (2007), Zepeda (2009), and Conner et al. (2010), who found no significant difference in education, age, or income between farmers’ market shopper and non-shoppers in the United States and Michigan.
Food Spending of Middle-Income Households Hardest Hit by the Great Recession
Amber Waves - USDA | Posted on October 1, 2018As household incomes fell during the Great Recession, total food spending by U.S. households declined by 7 percent between 2007 and 2010, as many households cut back on eating out. Food spending by households in the middle-income quintile remained below pre-recession levels in 2016, and these households continued to allocate more of their food budgets to food at home rather than eating out. Households with an elderly member tend to have a more fixed income from Social Security or pensions, which may be why these households did not have significant changes in their food purchasing patterns during the Great Recession.
Walmart, Sam's Club to put food products on blockchain
Reuters | Posted on September 26, 2018Walmart and its unit Sam’s Club said on Monday leafy greens suppliers will be asked to implement real-time, farm-to-store tracking using blockchain technology by next September, as the retailer tackles food-safety incidents. Walmart is among several other retailers such as Nestle SA trying to tap blockchain, a shared record of data kept by a network of computers to track food supply chain and improve safety.Walmart said on Monday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has consulted with the company to improve traceability of food products to help public officials investigate and find the source of food-borne disease outbreaks.
Michigan's new food safety team assists food businesses
Michigan Department of Agriculture | Posted on September 26, 2018A new team of food safety experts has been created to help speed up the licensing process for Minnesota food businesses. The goal of the Food Innovation Team (FIT), a subcommittee of Minnesota’s Food Safety and Defense Task Force, is to help state regulators accommodate new and innovative food business models while maintaining high food safety standards. “Obtaining a food license can be a daunting process,” said Jim Roettger, Licensing Liaison for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. “The Food Innovation Team will help business owners untangle issues and provide them access to experts in the areas of regulation, local food systems, and food safety.”In addition to helping individual food entrepreneurs, the Food Innovation Team will strive to improve the overall functioning of the food regulatory system. Roettger says as FIT hears cases and resolves issues that are complex or unclear, that information will be captured in a database that will be available to the public. Over time, this information will help regulators, food system advocates, and food entrepreneurs work through complex food licensing problems.The Food Innovation Team was developed through a collaborative process that involved the food regulatory divisions of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and Minnesota Department of Health, community groups including the Minnesota Farmers’ Market Association and Renewing the Countryside, as well as University of Minnesota Extension and the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture.
Mandatory scrap food recycling coming to Portland area restaurants
KGW | Posted on September 26, 2018Whether they want to or not, many Portland-area restaurants will soon be turning food scraps into energy. A mandatory food scrap recycling program is set to start in less than two years.Beginning in 2020 Metro will require any business that generates more than 250 pounds of food waste a week to separate out those food scraps for recycling.Currently, area food waste makes up about one-fifth of the garbage that goes to the landfill.According to Metro, that's about 5,000 semi-trucks full of food scraps every year that end up in our landfills. There the waste creates problematic methane gas.Metro wants to put that food waste to better use."The idea is, instead of having that food waste in a landfill where it creates methane gas which is a very potent greenhouse gas,” Pam Peck, Metro resource conservation manager said. “We can take that food waste and we can create better things out of it... we can create energy out of it.”
Cincinnati firm plans robotic indoor farm to supply Whole Foods, Jungle Jim's
Biz Journal | Posted on September 26, 201880 Acres Farms plans to build a large, fully automated indoor farm in Hamilton, Ohio, which will produce specialty greens to supply Jungle Jim’s International Market and Whole Foods as well as other retailers and foodservice distributors.
Free-range hens: The future egg safety conundrum?
Watt Ag Net | Posted on September 26, 2018On a recent trip to Europe I had the opportunity to visit some free-range layer houses. The barns look much like the other layer houses that I saw on my visit, they just had the “dog doors” on the side of the house. Just like “pasture-raised” hen farms in the U.S., there are no barriers to exposure to rodents, birds or insects for hens outside the house. I couldn’t help but think of the lengths that U.S. egg producers go to, whether in houses equipped with cages or aviaries, to keep rodents and flies out of their houses. The measures are undertaken for biosecurity reasons, both to protect the health of the hens and to insure the safety of the eggs for consumers.I can only imagine what an inspection report would read like after a free-range farm is implicated in a Salmonellosis outbreak. Consumers don’t understand that outdoor access means more hen mortality and a greater food safety risk.