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Dr. David Buckley is a principal scientist with Diversey’s Global Research and Development Innovation Team. In this interview, he details the threat avian influenza poses to processors and shares steps they can incorporate to minimize their risk and exposure to the disease.
Here’s a recap of the top daily seafood stories from Monday, Sept. 9: […]
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Price rises were linked to the demand
After moving down in July, average prices of chicken meat in Brazil in the wholesale market increased in August, reported Reuters.
Price rises were linked to the demand, which was firm especially in the first fortnight of the month, and to the restricted supply in the domestic market.
Late last week, CEO Ethan Brown announced the company will soon roll out a whole muscle cut, plant-based steak. As consumers cite the segment’s over-processed nature, could Beyond’s embrace of healthfulness inject a panacea into its challenged profit margins?
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In their editorial, biophotonics researcher Dr Christopher Rowlands and optical physicist Jon Gorecki from Imperial College London (neither of whom participated in the study) commented that while life does often mirror fiction, it rarely does so with such precision and at such a delayed pace. They were discussing a recent discovery by Stanford University researchers, who found that a yellow food dye commonly found in products like chips, cornflakes and sweets could make mice’s skin temporarily transparent.
“It’s one of those ideas that’s obvious in hindsight,” Dr Rowlands shared in an interview.
“Once I read the study, I couldn’t believe no one had thought of it sooner. I fully expect to see several follow-up studies over the next year applying the same principle to achieve deeper tissue penetration.”
This groundbreaking study marks the first time scientists have managed to make skin temporarily transparent by adjusting the refractive index – the measure of how light bends as it passes through different materials. The goal is to shed more light on the inner workings of the brain and other organs, potentially leading to better insights into complex biological processes and more effective treatments for diseases.
Traditional imaging techniques like ultrasound and MRI have limitations in terms of resolution and depth, but this new approach – published in the journal Science – promises to revolutionize how we visualize living tissues.
According to lead researcher Dr Zihao Ou, who conducted the study during his postdoctoral work at Stanford, it could fundamentally change the landscape of optical research in biology.
“For those familiar with the physics, it all makes sense. But for others, it seems like magic,” said Dr Ou, who now serves as an assistant professor of physics at the University of Texas, Dallas.
It has “blown the record out of the water by a factor of five,” conceded Dr Rowland.
The key to this breakthrough is tartrazine, also known as FD&C Yellow #5. It’s a certified food dye deemed safe for consumption by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), though it has been linked to hyperactivity in some children. While current imaging techniques can only penetrate about 2mm into the skin, the tartrazine-based solution allows scientists to see up to five times deeper.
When applied to the skin of live mice, the mixture of water and tartrazine rendered the skin transparent, revealing blood vessels and organs just beneath the surface. And unlike the fate of Wells’ fictional invisible man, this effect is reversible – washing off the dye restores the skin’s opacity, while any dye that diffuses into the skin is naturally excreted through urine.
“The fact that the dye is biocompatible is crucial,” Dr Ou noted.
“It’s safe, affordable and effective. We only need a small amount to achieve the desired effect.”
The transparency effect occurs because tartrazine absorbs blue light. When combined with water and the naturally occurring liquid layers within the skin (known as the extracellular matrix), it alters the refractive index to closely match that of skin cells. This adjustment minimizes the scattering of light, allowing it to pass through the skin more directly – like clearing a fog.
“We combined the yellow dye, which is a molecule that absorbs most light, especially blue and ultraviolet light, with skin, which is a scattering medium,” said Dr Ou.
The National Science Foundation has developed a fun experiment for adults interested in testing the effects of Yellow #5 at home using raw chicken.
“Individually, these two things block most light from getting through them. But when we put them together, we were able to achieve transparency of the mouse skin. It takes a few minutes for the transparency to appear. It’s similar to the way a facial cream or mask works: The time needed depends on how fast the molecules diffuse into the skin.”
Through this method, researchers were able to observe detailed internal structures in mice, including blood vessels on the brain’s surface and muscle movements in the digestive tract.
Dr Ou and his team envision numerous applications for this technology, particularly in medical diagnostics. The ability to make tissues temporarily transparent could allow doctors to view tumors, blood vessels and other structures without the need for invasive procedures. This could lead to more accurate diagnoses and better monitoring of diseases.
However, don’t expect this discovery to lead to human invisibility anytime soon. Human skin is 10 times thicker than that of a mouse and researchers are still working to determine the best way to apply this technology to human tissues. Dr Ou’s team at his new Dynamic Bio-imaging Lab at UTD is also exploring other molecules that might be even more effective than tartrazine for this purpose.
Study:
Achieving Optical Transparency in Live Animals with Absorbing Molecules
Authors: Zihao Ou, Yi-Shiou Duh, Nicholas J. Rommelfanger, et al.
Science, 6 Sep 2024, Vol 385, Issue 6713
Source: National Farm Animal Care Council Code of Practice for the care and handling of farm animals – Dairy Cattle, Section 2.4
Ventilation
Good ventilation, whether natural or mechanical, brings in fresh air and effectively removes dust, airborne pathogens, gases, and excess heat and humidity (6). Dust and ammonia irritate animals’ eyes and respiratory tracts and can make cattle more susceptible to respiratory infections. However, definitive thresholds for cattle have not been established, including for ammonia (6).
The risk of pneumonia and other calf diseases can be dramatically reduced through good ventilation (without drafts) and the provision of adequate air space (i.e., at least 6 m3 [212 ft3] per calf up to 6 weeks of age and 10 m3 [353 ft3] per calf up to 12 weeks of age) (22). One of the biggest pneumonia risks for young calves is sharing airspace with older cattle (23).
Temperature and Relative Humidity
Mature dairy cattle are generally able to tolerate low temperatures better than high temperatures (6). When the ambient temperature is above the thermoneutral zone, heat stress occurs because heat load (accumulated both metabolically and from the environment) is higher than the animal’s ability to dissipate heat (6). The specific ambient conditions (temperature, humidity) that lead to heat stress vary based on the cow’s previous temperature acclimation as well as level of milk production, breed, and other factors (6). High-producing cows are most susceptible to heat stress due to the increased energy demands of milk production (6).
The thermoneutral zone for young calves (up to 3 weeks of age) is 15–25°C (6). Particular attention should be paid to temperatures inside calf hutches, which can far exceed ambient temperatures on hot days (6).
REQUIREMENTSFacilities, including hutches, must provide cattle with fresh air; prevent the build-up of harmful gases, dust, and moisture; and minimize the risk of heat and cold stress. |
RECOMMENDED PRACTICES
When facing cold stress:
When facing heat stress:
A crop of canola growing in the Gippsland region of south-east Victoria. Photo: Pioneer Seeds
AUSTRALIA exported 386,653 tonnes of canola in July, down 13 percent from the 444,733t shipped in June, according to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The United Arab Emirates on 152,384t followed closely by Japan on 151,871t and France on 59,075t were the three biggest markets for Australian canola exported in July.
While only 500t in both June and July, the exports may indicate China is prepared to reconsider Australia as an origin after imposing a zero blackleg tolerance.
The July 2024 total for Australian canola exports is 9pc below the 424,153t shipped in July last year, when Japan followed by Pakistan and Belgium were the three major destinations.
According to Lachstock Consulting’s latest analysis of vessel line-ups, Australia is expected to ship 352,000t of bulk canola this month, in line with the usual season rundown seen ahead of new crop.
| CANOLA | May | Jun | Jly | Tonnes |
| Argentina | 0 | 0 | 13 | 13 |
| Bangladesh | 3544 | 53621 | 4446 | 61612 |
| Belgium | 122478 | 0 | 0 | 122478 |
| Canada | 6 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| Chile | 128 | 0 | 0 | 128 |
| China | 0 | 500 | 500 | 1000 |
| France | 55000 | 0 | 59075 | 114075 |
| Germany | 131602 | 61861 | 0 | 193463 |
| Japan | 132795 | 129443 | 151871 | 414109 |
| Malaysia | 5479 | 2839 | 3309 | 11627 |
| Mexico | 0 | 87950 | 0 | 87950 |
| Nepal | 16807 | 13963 | 15054 | 45824 |
| Pakistan | 181293 | 36023 | 0 | 217316 |
| South Africa | 80 | 0 | 0 | 80 |
| UAE | 92945 | 58533 | 152384 | 303862 |
| TOTAL | 742156 | 444733 | 386653 | 1573542 |
Advocates for former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris on ag policy clashed over trade, immigration and tax issues during an informal debate Monday.
“The four years of the Trump presidency was defined by chaos and uncertainty for the farm economy and the outlook for a second term would be even more severe,” asserted Rod Snyder, a Democrat who recently stepped down as director of EPA’s first Office of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
But Kip Tom, who’s leading the Farmers and Ranchers for Trump Coalition, used the forum sponsored by the Farm Foundation to attack the Biden-Harris administration for its regulatory agenda and what he said was inaction on trade policy.
Tom, an Indiana farmer who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations food and agriculture programs during the Trump administration, said overregulation has been the driving force behind recent food inflation, not price manipulation by big food companies.
“We have collapsing farm incomes. We’ve got a growing trade deficit. We have the tax policies which are a threat to our industry. We have the overreach of some agencies, agencies that should be working to help us bring these new innovations to market, yet they slow us down,” he said.
Repeating the attack on Biden’s trade policy, Tom said, “We’re going to deal with several years of surplus here. We’re going to deal with several years of lower farm income, all because of lack of trade under the Biden-Harris administration.”
Snyder repeatedly brought up Trump’s trade war with China, saying it cost farmers $29 billion in 2018 and 2019 alone while “undermining markets that took decades for our farmers to build.”
Snyder noted that Trump has threatened to impose across-the-board tariffs of up to 20% on imports and to raise tariffs to as much as 60% on China. Snyder said the retaliation that would result would fall on farmers, hurting their exports and raising the cost of inputs. “That is not a sustainable outcome. … I just think it’s bad, bad news.’
Snyder also said Trump’s threat to carry out mass deportations of illegal immigrants threatened to exacerbate ag labor shortages. “President Trump would prefer to throw our country’s farms and food system into chaos, rather than forge a meaningful solution to the decades-long problem,” Snyder said.
Snyder accused Trump of leaving U.S. biofuel policy in “disarray” in part by granting small refinery waivers that significantly reduced the amount of biofuels that had to be used under the Renewable Fuel Standard.
Snyder also pushed back on Tom’s criticism of Harris’ proposals to stop price gouging by food companies. “We’re not talking about food price caps… we’re talking about companies that have demonstrated they’re willing to break the law in times of a crisis,” Snyder said.
Defending Trump’s trade policy, Tom noted that Trump negotiated reductions to trade barriers imposed by Japan and other countries. Tom also pointed out that Biden had left in place key tariffs that Trump had imposed. “We’ve had no trade deals under the Harris administration, none,” Tom said.
In an apparent allusion to Trump’s payments to farmers after starting the trade war with China, Tom said, “He took care of us before, when he [raised tariffs] originally, and then he’ll take care of us this time, too.”
On tax policy, Tom raised concerns about the estate tax and preserving stepped-up basis for inherited assets. Stepped-up basis means that the capital gain on an inherited asset is calculated from the date that the original owner died, rather than when he or she acquired the property. Under current law, heirs don’t owe taxes until the assets are sold.
“We’ve got to make sure we have tax policy that allows farmers to continue in the future,” Tom said.
Snyder downplayed benefits to farmers of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and noted that extending provisions that expire next year, including a doubling of the estate tax exemption, would cost more than $4 trillion over 10 years.
“I certainly don’t think it’s average farmers and ranchers across the United states that are seeing the most benefit from” the TCJA, Snyder said.
Tom repeatedly came back to the issue of regulations, saying at one point that regulations issued under the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act needed to be rolled back.
Tom downplayed the deportation threat, saying he had recently met with poultry producers and processors who insisted they relied on workers who were in the country legally. “So, I’m not worried about them being raided and losing their workforce, but we do have an illegal immigration problem that needs to be solved,” he said.
Tom also stressed the importance of the H-2A program, which allows farms to import workers for temporary work.
One issue that didn’t come up directly was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claim that Trump has embraced his effort to address a childhood health crisis that Kennedy blames in part on the food industry and agriculture.
Still, Tom brought up the issue of ultraprocesssed foods, saying at one point, “There’s no question that ultraprocessed foods are probably things we shouldn’t be buying.”
For more news, go to Agri-Pulse.com.
Mondelez International sees cakes and pastries and baked snacks as key categories for growth and potential acquisitions, top executives said at the Barclays Global Consumer Staples Conference in Boston.
Dirk Van de Put, chairman and chief executive officer, told investors in a Sept. 4 session at the event that Mondelez’s strong market share in the chocolate and biscuit categories — and its recent acquisitions in the baked snacks arena — offer a springboard for expansion into soft baked treats like cakes and pastries.
“If you imagine the biscuit aisle, which is probably crackers and sweet biscuits in Europe, particularly a little bit less in the US, across from that aisle, you will find a whole space with softer offerings — cakes and pastries, basically,” Van de Put said. “It’s a natural extension of the biscuits space. It’s a space that’s very fragmented. It’s about an $80 billion market globally, slightly smaller but not a lot than chocolate and biscuits. But in certain markets, like China, where chocolate is $4 billion and biscuits is $8 billion, cakes and pastries is a $30 billion market.”
Offerings in the cakes and pastries segment are “sometimes quite basic products,” presenting expansion opportunities for Mondelez’s chocolate and biscuit brands, said Van de Put.
“For us to come in with high-value brands with innovations that premiumize that category gives us the right to play,” he said. “So we’re quite excited. It’s a category that’s growing well in line with the biscuit category globally, a higher net revenue per kilo than biscuits. These are all the reasons why we like this space.”
As an example, Van de Put cited Mondelez’s January 2022 acquisition of Chipita Global SA, described at the time as a “high-growth leader” in the Central and Eastern European croissant and baked snack markets. Mondelez noted that Chipita offers expansion possibilities for its Cadbury and Milka chocolate brands in croissants and 7Days packaged croissants and bake rolls brand in baked snacks.
“It’s largely a packaged croissant,” he said of Chipita’s offering. “It’s more of a meal replacement snack, a mid-morning snack with a coffee, at an acceptable price point, (with) very high penetration in middle- and lower-class consumers. The opportunity there is to innovate with some of our chocolate brands, have a higher distribution in the existing countries and then extend worldwide. We’re testing several countries around the world. But even before we bought the company, they were already having success in Mexico, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, and they’re doing well in India. We see this as an item that could go worldwide.”
Mondelez’s April 2020 acquisition of Give & Go, a North American maker of sweet baked foods, including the brands two-bite (brownies) and Create-A-Treat (cookie and gingerbread decorating kits), also plays in a promising growth space — the in-store bakery, said Van de Put. US and European in-store bakeries have been shifting to “freeze-and-thaw” models in which finished cakes and pastries are shipped frozen to stores, thawed during transport and presented fresh to consumers in the bakery department, he explained.
“That is very interesting for the retailer, because if they have to make it in-store, that has a lot of labor related to it, a lot of waste,” Van de Put said. “So we see a shift gradually over time toward that freeze-and-thaw approach. Give & Go, the company that we bought, was about a $400 million company four years ago. It’s already a $700 million company now. It’s the biggest player in this space in North America. We’re the same thing in croissants, brownies, biscuits and so on. It’s what you find in the bakery space.”
Mondelez already has been branching into the in-store bakery area via extensions of its popular packaged snack brands, such as Oreo cupcakes and muffins.
“That is a high-value-added, high-net-revenue-per-kilo segment that spikes the interest of the retailers,” Van de Put said. “We’ve started to bring in our brands, Oreo and so on. We think that’s going to be a development space globally in cakes and pastries.”
Luca Zaramella, chief financial officer, said at the conference that Mondelez would consider acquisition opportunities in markets where it’s at-scale by adding high-potential assets and in markets where it could boost scale by building out its brands. He cited the company’s April 2022 purchase of the Ricolino candy and confections business and its August 2022 acquisition of energy and snack bar maker Clif & Co.
“We like mostly bolt-on acquisitions of the likes we have done in the last few years, if you think about Clif, Ricolino, Give & Go,” Zaramella said. “The way we look at this is, in markets where we don’t have enough scale, we are not necessarily obsessed with acquiring biscuits, chocolate or baked snacks. In the case of Ricolino, for instance, it was a presence in the candy sector. But again, that would allow us to go and distribute Oreo and to make Oreo much bigger in Mexico. So, in these markets where we don’t have enough scale, we are looking at our core categories, but not necessarily. We are looking at adding scale and making sure that we can get revenue synergies to our core categories.
“In markets where we are at scale, we are looking for assets that are chocolate, biscuits, and importantly, in cakes and pastry. We keep on being very excited about cakes and pastry. It is a massive category. It is a category that grows very fast. It is a category that allows branded products that we have in our portfolio to really thrive. So that’s really the focus.”
Zaramella also pointed to snack bars as a growth opportunity, but likely less so on the acquisition front given its purchases of refrigerated nutrition bar brand Perfect Snacks in July 2019 and then Clif three years later.
“As a category, we are looking at snack bars,” he said. “At this point in time, between what we acquired through Clif and what we have with other brands like Grenade and Perfect Snacks, I think we have, in our set of brands, enough platforms that we could roll out geographically and expand, given that the category is nascent in many places. But it is still quite a big opportunity in our eyes.”
US bought 6% of the volume sold by Brazil
The importance of beef in exports of agribusiness products from Brazil has been growing. Among the countries responsible for the volume increase are China, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, United States and Egypt, according to a recent marketing report from Cepea.
From January to July, the Brazilian industry exported 32% more than in the same period of 2023, but the revenue in dollar rose less, 21%, due to the 8% decrease of the average prices, according to data from Secex.
China has been demanding less of the Brazilian beef. From 2019 to 2023, the country boosted purchases in 271% (in volume). In the partial of 2024 (up to July) against the same period of 2023, the increase is 13%, which leads China as the responsible for 49.8% of Brazilian in natura beef exports this year. Prices in dollar, however, dropped 12% – data from Secex.
Other important destinations are the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Secex data indicate that these three countries purchased 13% of the in natura beef shipped by Brazil this year, 83% more compared to the same period in 2023.
In the accumulated of 2024, the United States bought 6% of the volume sold by Brazil to the international market, moving up 54% against that in the same period last year.
