Cash, cash, cash. Castigated as simple asset-strippers out to make
a quick buck, the entrance of private equity onto the food industry
stage has participants chattering in the wings.
Praise where praise is due. And it is certainly due for one
small-time drinks firm in southern Britain, which is spear-heading
answers to global water shortages that threaten to wreak havoc on
food producers everywhere.
Henry Ford's famous aphorism that if he had asked people what they
wanted, they would have said faster horses, provides food makers
with a lesson they must learn.
In among the hollers about obesity and the concerns over nutrition,
food companies now need to work hard to ensure they clinch public
trust, as a matter of insurance. This means more than compliance on
traceability and labeling. This...
Water, we save. Energy, we conserve. But food, it seems, we can
waste, junk and bin and no-one cares. Except one crusader, whose
20-year project has proven what should have been obvious in the
first place: our attitude to food is...
Whether it is a pork pie from Melton Mowbray or olive oil from
Nimes, every Tom, Denis and Haemon seems to believe their local
food deserves the EU's protection from big, bad corporations.
One cannot envy the chief executive faced with a scientific study
that casts doubt over the efficacy or safety of his core product.
But avoiding a sales slump, media vilification and even charges of
fraud means squaring up to such...
As Chinese producers move in on western markets, the first response
by many established players is to protect and defend their previous
market positions. It's a doomed strategy.
A society that views food as taste-bud entertainment rather than a
basic of well-being was always bound to run into health problems.
But with obesity now afflicting 300m people, and diabetes set to
reach similar numbers within two...
It is time to draw on science to establish once and for all whether
food intolerance is just a source of succour for hypochondriacs, or
whether it is genuinely a modern scourge.
As lawyers circle the food and drink industry like a fatted calf,
the first lesson for those preparing for defence is that it is not
so much what you sell that matters, as how you sell it.
The image of secret radio chips planted inside the home from larder
to bathroom, transmitting data freely to Corporation Inc, is enough
to curl the toes of more than anti-capitalism activists.
It is a perversion of the 21st century that while affluent
societies continue the quest to slice the fat from their
increasingly obese populations, five million children die from
hunger each year, and more than 850m people go chronically...
