Headlines & features

As the October 9, 2009 deadline approaches for Australian bakers to use only iodized salt in their bread, Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) has issued a User Guide to assist in adopting the technological modification, AFN reports.

Occidental Petroleum will be the new owner of Dow Chemical's calcium chloride business, reports Bloomberg.com . Dow's CaCl business was the nation's largest for this deicing chemical.

Dr. Margaret Hamburg has been confirmed as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration by voice vote in the Senate. Her first priority will be to help direct development of a vaccine for the new swine flu, the Associated Press reports. She says she also wants to revamp food safety.

President-elect Barack Obama likes salt ... on caramel, at least. So reports the NY Times in a December 31 story "How Caramel Developed a Taste For Salt ." Food technologists readily understand how salt makes sweet sweeter by masking bitterness, but the traditional Breton confection of heavily-salted butter caramels has now "made its successful run from rarefied Parisian pastry shops to American big-box stores in a decade -- a relatively short period, according to people who study food trends.

Spurred by bargain hunting on depressed global commodity markets, led by resurgent Chinese iron imports, the Baltic Dry Index has hit 2300, a 400 point surge over the past month which has pushed the index "back to the levels it enjoyed just before the boom in shipping started three years ago," Investors Chronicle reported May 13. Shipping is a major component in consumer prices of heavy bulk commodities like road salt.

Cystic fibrosis is the most common lethal genetic disease in white populations, but new therapies based on “a more complete understanding of the molecular-biological defect” allows “more aggressive therapy.” The leading new therapy uses inhaled hypertonic saline solution to correct a basic hydration defect. O’Sullivan and Freedman, from UMass and Harvard respectively, declare in an article just published in The Lancet :

Bon Appetit contributor John Hastings provides an informed and spirited review of the salt and health controversy "The Saline Solution " in the May issue.

The lesson is clear: don't screw up snow and ice removal; citizens care...deeply. The Seattle City Council has completed its review of the disaster that struck last December when a week's delay in ordering the use of salt paralyzed the city. The mayor's after-action review had identified problem areas. The Council report, released today, found more. According to the City Council's review, SDOT lacked a modern tracking system and clear policies on how to prioritize and manage the storm response. The mayor and Council agreed to hire an independent consultant to improve the city's snowfighting plan.

Compass Minerals has reported a 25% increase in first quarter earnings over the same period in 2008, the company announced April 27, and a 50% increase in margins from 21% to 31%.

“Continued strong pricing enabled us to deliver the strongest operating and net earnings of any first quarter in our history. However, we experienced declines in sales volumes in both of our operating segments, with salt sales reflecting milder-than-normal winter weather in the Midwest and specialty fertilizer sales mirroring the very weak demand which persists throughout the global potash industry,” said Angelo Brisimitzakis, Compass Minerals president and CEO.

President Obama's strategy is to sharply curtail ("cap and trade") fossil fuel as the mainstay of the U.S. economy. He has also abandoned the nuclear waste disposal project at Yucca Mountain, NV. The May-June issue of Miller-McCune , published by the Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media and Public Policy, features its answer to where "to store all the radioactive waste an expanded nucler power program could produce." The answer: salt. (Salt is the answer to so many problems!)