The Salt Institute was among 40 associations which have asked Congress to delay implemention of Customs and Border Protection's "10+2 Rule" until the agency can test a prototype to ensure it is workable. The group argued that the new data requirements for U.S.-bound container shipments would cost $20 billion, raising the cost of doing business and raising consumer prices. Rather than enhance homeland security, the measure "creates new security threats by greatly increasing the opportunity for containers to be tampered with" during the additional time needed for the more extensive clearing procedures, the letter avers.
At 7:02 am this morning, Rohm and Haas announced it has sold its business to chemical giant Dow Chemical ; the sale includes Morton Salt. Rohm and Haas chairman and CEO Raj Gupta said combining the companies offered "transformative" potential. Dow chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris used the same word, "transformative," in Dow's release.
Each company has a spate of specialty businesses. The combination makes Dow "the world's preeminent chemical business," said Gupta. Dow will continue to operate Rohm and Haas as a separate unit and, in fact, transfer some of its exisitng speciality chemical businesses under the Rohm and Haas structure. Rohm and Haas will continue to operate its Philadelphia headquarters.
Dow offered $78 a share for the acquisition. Rohm and Haas closed yesterday at $44.83 in weak trading. Its 52-week high was $62.68.
Salt Institute president Richard L. Hanneman noted that Dow Chemical started its business as a salt-based chemical company in Midland, MI, where it is still headquartered. "Most people are surprised to learn that the single largest use of salt isn't to prepare our foods or keep our winter roads safe, but as the feedstock to the world's chlor-alkali industry, the same as petroleum is the feedstock to the petrochemical industry. "Chlorine chemistry touches every aspect of our lives," Hanneman explained.
Mort and I are at a meeting in Chicago this week. Today, the usual anti-salt crowd (Michael Jacobson, Larry Appel, et al) told a food industry conference that they should be concerned that Americans' appetite for salt is greater today than ever before. We've contended there hasn't been much change in a century.
Returning to my hotel room, I found a new database just announced by the US Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service tracking the nutrient composition of the US diet back nearly 100 years. For perspective, the government's NHANES database figures Americans take in about 3,400 mg/day of dietary sodium.
In this database, " ," USDA analysts estimate that per-capita daily sodium intake has increased 10 milligrams and has had swings of only about +/- 40 milligrams throughout the entire last half century, 1955-2005 (the latest data).
Maybe bit by bit our "truth squad" can get this debate to focus on facts. Everyone's entitled to their opinion; no one is entitled to their own facts.
Just for our readers' information, summarizing some of the changes in other nutrients since 1970, the analysis found in 2005 each American consumed (on average) 80 more pounds of commercially grown vegetables than in 1970, plus 56 more pounds of grain products and 34 more pounds of fruit. On the other hand, the numbers show the average American ate 55 fewer eggs and drank 10 gallons less milk and nine gallons less coffee. Protein intake shifted in favor of poultry (40 more pounds), cheese (20 more pounds), and fish (4 more pounds of boneless, trimmed equivalent), but with a 17-pound drop in red meat. Americans ate 31-pounds more in fat and oil additives and 23-pounds more of sweeteners. Gosh, maybe salt ISN'T the culprit in our "obesity epidemic." The data also track the well-known concern for calcium deficiency, especially in early-teenage girls. The ten gallons/year drop in milk represents 34 milligrams a day less calcium (mineral deficiencies, of course, are a trigger for salt-sensitive changes in blood pressure and a major reason why the Salt Institute has so strongly supported the DASH Diet, high in fruits, vegetables and dairy products.
There's a new public recognition of the link of salt and health, a "saline solution." As described in our blog back in January, salt-lined "caves" are the latest "in thing" in this week's Time Magazine's Living section. Reporter Jennine Lee-St. John seems to be on a mission to convince Time's readers that the halotherapy in Chicago's Galos Caves replicates the longstanding success of treating Eastern Europeans suffering respiratory ailments with recuperative sessions in salt mines. But it's stress relief that attracts US Midwesterners, not relief from air pollution. Lee-St. John describes the attraction as a "quest for holistic relaxation."
The 9th International Symposium on Salt now has an active website and has issued a Call for Papers. Deadline for abstract submission is December 15, 2008.
The meeting, themed with the Salt Institute slogan (and film title) "Salt: The Essence of Life," will be held at the China National Convention Center in Beijing. It is being sponsored and organized by Salt Institute member China National Salt Industry Corporation . The Salt Institute is co-sponsoring, along with the Indian Salt Manufacturers Association and the Solution Mining Research Institute .
Topics for which papers are invited include the following:
- 1. Reduction of Energy Consumption in Salt Production
- 2. Salt Production Safety
- 3. Salt Sources and Occurrences
- 4. Salt Extraction
- 5. Rock Salt
- 6. Evaporated Salt
- 7. Sea/lake/Solar Salt
- 8. Salt Byproducts
- 9. Salt Processing, Analysis and Quality Assurance
- 10. Salt Markets and Applications
- 11. New Applications
- 12. Applications of New Technologies and Equipments
- 13. Salt and the Environment
- 14. Salt and Health
- 15. Iodized Salt for IDD Elimination
- 16. Salt and History (Salt and Culture)
Keep a watch on the website as the program develops.
Maybe you should be reading BizCentral.org . That's the opinion offered by Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner .
After commenting about the origin of the word "insourcing," Tapscott admonishes:
By the way, if you aren't checking BizCentral.org regularly, you should be, as it brings together a dozen or so of the top minds from across the field of business-related associations that follow policy debates and developments in Washington.
Obviously, we're both flattered and prone to agree: visit BizCentral.org .
ABC News' The Blotter noted the launch of BizCentral.org and the high-flying lobbying groups participating, including the Salt Institute. Enjoy . Justin Rood reported:
Blogging: It's not just for the little guy anymore.
Big business has officially moved into the blogosphere, a territory once claimed by radicals, grassroots organizers and armchair political philosophers.
Bizcentral.org is a new group blog authored by lobbyists for some of the biggest industries in America. The petroleum industry is represented, as well as nuclear power, chain drug stores, the American Trucking Association - even the Salt Institute, "the world's foremost source of authoritative information about salt (sodium chloride) and its more than 14,000 known uses."
Business needs a stronger voice in the blogosphere and so the Salt Institute joined today with ten other associations - representing sectors as diverse as energy, transportation, telecomm, manufacturing, retail and consumer goods - to launch BizCentral.org , a community blog for business associations, the Salt Institute announced today.
The charter members of BizCentral.org may represent very different industries, but they support common pro-growth economic principles like free markets, free trade, and low taxes. But, while each of the industries has a unique story, the collective story of how business and industry satisfy basic consumer needs and what public policies can deliver sustainable economic security is a message that will interest and inform the influentials who we expect to participate in the blog discussion.
A Congressman can't be too careful in dealing with the media. Latest example: Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) who represents Morton Salt's Manistee evap plant, responded to a question on page 17 of today's print issue of The Hill newspaper, in "The Culinary Inquisition" by reporter Kris Kitto. The question seemed innocuous: "Salty or sweet." Apparently caught without a District-sensitive staffer at his elbow, Hoekstra opted for "sweet." It's an election year, Congressman. What will the Manistee precincts think?
Chicago boasts more Polish residents than Warsaw and now it's hijacking a salty secret from Eastern Europe - salt caves or salt rooms. A recent Chicago Tribune article notes a suburban restaurant featuring a relaxing, spa-like respiratory restorative salt cave inspired by one the owners visited on a trip to Poland - as well "Chicago's first dining room encased in Black Sea salt." The owners also converted one of their salt caves into a small dining room.
Other Chicago-area spa's have salt "breathing rooms" to restore mind and body. Patrons claim "30 to 60 minutes in a salt-covered room can help relieve stress, cure a hangover or even improve respiratory health." Don't miss the video .
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