SAB Ltd, is funding water saving projects to compensate for its potential water consumption of 14 billion litres a year in South Africa. WWF (World Wildlife Fund) is facilitating the “water neutrality process” with a South African Government Project to ensure that this is not just a multinational greenwashing!

SAB Ltd is the South African subsidiary of SABMiller which is the second largest brewery in the world .

Water Neutrality

In October 2008, Dr Deon Nel, Head of the WWF Sanlam Living Waters Partnership explained

“The concept of water neutrality, based on its carbon equivalent, has been used loosely over the past years; however, until now no-one has been able to quantitatively justify these claims. We believe that our scheme is the first in the world that allows participants to truly claim to be water neutral.”

Participants will replenish water supplies, by investing in projects that quantitatively supplement water supplies equal to their water usage.

Note: Water neutrality has taken on a form in certain areas that is significantly different to the process introduced here by WWF.

(more…)

Once agin its interesting to look at what claims have been made by new product launches in 2008.

Mintel, who derived the results from their Global New Products Database, found that globally 23 % of all new products launched made natural claims lower than the high of 36 % in the UK.

While products claiming added nutrients appeared on only 5% of new products (much down on 2007) those claiming to have some component reduced (eg fat, calories) represented 18%.

This can be interpreted to mean that natural is a new focus of those looking for healthy living, with lest emphasis on additives and reduced foods.

‘Convenience’ and ‘ethical and environmental’ appeared on only 12 and 5 % of new products respectively highlighting the need for innovative natural products,

I doubt that this applies in African markets and present it as maybe a indication of what the future could hold.

Consumers in Europe are likely to increasingly see fruit and vegetables with less than perfect appearance (the so called “wonky” produce) on their supermarket shelves from July 2009 as the EU tries to reduce its bureaucracy

Vegetables

Attractive and wholesome fruit and vegetables like these feed the world but have, over the last few decades, lost their place in the “First World’s“ supermarkets to perfectly shaped and coloured specimens. Through the supermarket pushing “quality” and bureaucrats busying themselves, visual standards gained a status that has had negative impacts for the consumer, the farmer and the environment.

The European Union is well known for the banana standard which, after a year of study, stated that a banana should be “5.5 inches long and 1.1 inches wide, and could not be abnormally bent”. This allowed the EU to advantage bananas from the Caribbean (mainly its former colonies) that met the standard to the disadvantage of Latin American producers who were backed by USA based multinationals. Rulings by the World Trade Organisation and the threats of the US lead to a truce with the tariffs being removed progressively.

But now regulations on 26 fruits and vegetables have been repealed while member states can allow the sale of 10 other products which do not meet the standards, so long as appropriate labeling is used. (more…)

Here is a niche of niche markets for you to think on!

Yes it does say

your pain is our pleasure

and

keep out of reach of children

This particular chili sauce, Blair’s Shot To Hell Berserker, is associated with Ozzy Osbourne of Black Sabath fame!

The sauce is claimed to be 600 times hotter than a jalapeno chili! But is still five times milder than Blair’s hottest sauce it’s 16 Million Reserve. Which to put it all in perspective, is 7 500 times hotter than Tabasco sauce.

The niche is the people segment is people with asbestos mouths!

I have often promoted fruit preservation as cheap, simple and safe technologies. This is really based on the fact that most fruits and fruit products are high acidity foods and therefore intrinsically safe to process. This is maybe an error since it excludes the preservation of animal proteins which are good sources of nutrition.

This online book solves this problem with a great deal of implementable information from detailed explanations of spoilage and the dangers to information on how to prepare fish and meat for processing as well as the range of processes available.

The extract from the contents below will give an overview of what is offered.

1 Introduction 6

2 Storage life and spoilage of fish and meat 8
2.1 How long can fish or meat be kept? 8
2.2 When has fish or meat gone bad? 8
2.3 Which micro-organisms spoil fish and meat? 10
2.4 Spoilage and/or fish and meat poisoning 10
2.5 How does contamination take place? 12
2.6 How does one prevent contamination? Hygiene! 12
2.7 Prevention of spoilage 13
2.8 Which method should be chosen? 15

3 Preparation of fish and meat 16

4 Salting fish and meat 25
4.1 General information 25
4.2 Salting fish 26
4.3 Salting meat 32
4.4 Preparing salted fish and meat for consumption 36

5 Drying fish and meat 37

6 Smoking fish and meat 46

7 Fermenting fish 54

8 Canning fish and meat 64

9 Cooling and freezing fish and meat 78

Further reading 82
Useful addresses 84
Glossary 86