He urged the Governor to "recognize that our citizens’ quality of life must be considered in the context of its long-term environmental consequences" and that the bill invites "unintended consequences, which are, ironically, environmental in their impact." A veto, he argued, would represent "an affirmation that the carefully-drawn process in current law will prevent any rush to judgment that could actually have a net-negative environmental impact."

The bill is expected to clear the Legislature in July or August.

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:

Keep a watch on the website as the program develops.

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.

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."

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.

Highway salt sales were the second best year on record with 20.3 million tons (the record was set in 2005: 20.5 million tons were used to keep winter roads safe and passable), up sharply, 67%, over 2006, the worst year in highway sales for the past decade. Revenues for highway salt sales were $585.7 million

Among other major markets, salt for animal nutrition grew for the third year in the past four year after rather steady declines over the past decade, increasing 7.3% to 1.627 million tons. Chemical sales reversed an historic climb, recovering 11.3% to 2.1 million tons, the most since 2004. Food salt sales were totally flat: 1,562 in 2007, 1563 in 2006. The only declining market was water softening salt which fell from 3.6 million tons to 3.5 million tons in 2007, down 2.7%

Salt sales back to 1977 are reported on the Salt Institute website.

Arguing that salt affects blood pressure, a number of advocacy groups endorse removing GRAS from salt and having FDA set food-by-food limits on salt content on the assumption that this would produce lower sodium intakes and lower blood pressure. Defenders of GRAS for salt (SI, food manufacturers, some health groups and prominent hypertension researchers, argue that blood pressure is an "surrogate" risk factor -- and not a very good surrogate at that! There are other surrogate candidates to predict chronic disease risk: insulin resistance, plasma renin activity and more. Salt affects them as well. Salt's defenders -- like the Salt Institute -- have insisted the right test isn't blood pressure, but rather actual disease outcomes like heart attack incidence or, better still, mortality rates.

FDA is conducting a hearing Nov. 29th to air the controversy with prominent proponents of both views delivering oral testimony to an FDA panel in College Park, MD.

The Salt Institute will be testifying, renewing its call for a controlled trial of the health outcomes of low-salt diets and challenging FDA to help fund the study. Read the news release or the full testimony.

For a good review of the issues, see JunkFoodScience's story "The good-bad salt debate gets a hearing at the FDA."

The award was announced at the American Public Works Association Congress in San Antonio, TX.

Overall, US salt sales for the six months increased to 16.3 million tons, up 37.4%, and revenues grew 30.4% to $832 million.

All of the increase was in rock sales to keep the nation's highways safe and passable. Rock salt sales climbed 57.2% and associated revenues by 76.4%. In contrast, evaporated salt sales were absolutely flat (they fell 1,000 tons from 2.106 million to 2.105 million tons). Solar salt managed a 9.3% tonnage increase. Revenues rose for both: evap sales advancing 8.8% and solar sales by 14.1%.

The only market decline was water softening tonnage which slipped 9% to 1.57 million tons. Chemicals salt sales reversed a prolonged slide, gaining 18.4% to 941,000 tons. Salt for human and animal consumption rose, respectively by 2.6% and 3.4% (790,000 tons of food salt and 802,000 tons of ag salt).

The Salt Instiutute has been reporting salt industry sales statistics since 1977.

No need to wait for Gen. Petreaus' report in September. THIS surge IS working.

The Salt Institute applauded this new document, but felt it could be improved through greater transparency and the assurance of complete objectivity on the part of those organizations or experts that were called upon to render judgments. SI consequently sent their comments to the FDA .

The importance of transparency was stressed and the suggestion made that whenever health claims were rejected, the decisions made, along with their supporting information should be made public. This will add to the transparency of the process and will also present the added benefit of imparting knowledge of the decision-making process to others who are contemplating submission of a claim.

SI forwarded the advice that surrogate endpoints should be considered with great caution in the evaluation of health claims. Health outcomes were the gold standard with which FDA should be concerned, particularly when the surrogate or proxy endpoints bore no apparent relationship to the final health outcomes, as is the case with hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

A final point that was made related to the use of federal government bodies to achieve significant scientific agreement. It was pointed out that federal agencies have occasionally developed an institutional interest that has clouded their objectivity when making scientific judgments. It was stressed that such institutions should not be invited to evaluate those claims upon which they had previously made public statements.

Without doubt, the most recent edition of the Guidance for Evidence-based Scientific Evaluation of Health Claims is an excellent initiative, which would be even more useful with a few improvements.

The Salt Institute today joined the Business Roundtable, US Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, National Federation of Independent Business, National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, National Restaurant Association, Associated General Contractors of America, and the Portland Cement Association in writing to the subcommittee urging them to rescind their funding ban. The ten associations wrote:

Executive Order 13422 closed a legal loophole that had allowed federal agencies to circumvent regulatory review and planning requirements by issuing guidance documents with binding language in lieu of a proposed rule requiring public notice and comment. By statute and court opinion, guidance documents have no legally binding effect; they are merely an agency’s interpretation of how the public can comply with a particular rule or regulation. Yet federal agencies issue guidance documents in a manner that is legally binding on the regulated community, and we believe these guidance documents should be subjected to public comments.

House Democrats led by Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) included such a provision in the House appropriations bill earlier.