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Japanese scientists have found a way to create artificial meat from sewage containing human feces. Somehow this feels like a Vonnegut plotline: population boom equals food shortage. Solution? Synthesize food from human waste matter. Absurd yes, but Japanese scientists have actually discovered a way to create edible steaks from human feces.

Mitsuyuki Ikeda, researcher at Okayama Laboratory, has developed steaks based on proteins from human excrement. Tokyo Sewage approached the scientist because of an overabundance of sewage mud. They asked him to explore the possible uses of the sewage, and Ikeda found that the mud contained a great deal of protein because of all the bacteria.

The researchers extracted those proteins, combined them with a reaction enhancer, and put it in an exploder which created the artificial steak. The "meat" is 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% lipids, and 9% minerals. The researchers apply red food coloring and enhance the flavor with soy protein. Initial tests have people saying it even tastes like beef.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/international/japanese-scientists-creates-meat-out-of-feces/

The world's four largest grain traders, responsible for the vast majority of global corn, soya, and wheat trading and processing, have been accused of large-scale tax evasion in a landmark series of cases being brought against them by the Argentinian government. With the global food system and who controls it under intense scrutiny because of record prices, the legal battle with the "ABCD four," as they are known, has taken on heightened significance.

Ricardo Echegaray, director of Argentina's revenue and customs service, Afip, has given a detailed account of the charges his department is bringing against ADM, Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus. "These companies have gone into criminality," Echegaray said. "2008 was when agricultural commodities prices spiked and was the best year for them in prices, yet we could see that the companies with the biggest sales showed very little profit in this country."

Echegaray said he had evidence from his detailed inquiry that all four traders had submitted false declarations of sales and routed profits through tax havens or their headquarters, in contravention of Argentinian tax law. He also alleged they had on occasion used phantom firms to buy grain. He further alleged that they had inflated costs in Argentina to reduce taxable profits or claim tax credits there.

Honey is a miracle food; it never goes bad. It was reported that archaeologists found 2,000 year old jars of honey in Egyptian tombs and they still tasted delicious. Many people find it rather surprising that bacteria cannot grow in honey because all things being equal, bacteria loves sugar.

The unique chemical composition of low water content and relatively high acidic level in honey creates a low pH (3.2-4.5) environment that makes it very unfavourable for bacteria or other micro-organism to grow. Thus, "Best Before Dates" on honey buckets do not seem to be very important.

The current spike in petrol prices is not primarily a result of anything to do with the freedom fighters in the Arab world. Nor is it a result of OPEC’s production levels. Rather, the spikes are primarily a result of the speculative market on oil. This speculative market is driven by the practices of the biggest banks, who have special exemptions to treat commodities like a casino, who have zero incentive to appropriately hedge their bets, who do not provide the liquidity they were designed to provide, and who generally provide nothing of value to society except to push prices of things higher and higher so that very rich people will continue to invest with them.

Scientists in the Netherlands have discovered that insects produce significantly less greenhouse gas per kilogram of meat than cattle or pigs. Their study, published in the online journal PLoS ONE, suggests that a move towards insect farming could result in a more sustainable — and affordable — form of meat production.

Robert Watson, a top ingredient buyer for Kraft Foods, needed $20,000 to pay his taxes. So he called a broker for a California tomato processor that for years had been paying him bribes to get its products into Kraft’s plants. The check would soon be in the mail, the broker promised. “We’ll have to deduct it out of your commissions as we move forward,” he said, using a euphemism for bribes.

Days later, federal agents descended on Kraft’s offices and confronted Mr Watson. He admitted his role in a bribery scheme that has laid bare a vein of corruption in the food industry. The scheme also involved millions of pounds of tomato products with high levels of mold or other defects, raising serious questions about how well food manufacturers safeguard the quality of their ingredients.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/business/25tomatoes.html