Dennis DiPietre, economist

What started out as a way to place a hurdle to imports of meat into this country and thereby protect producers from foreign competition, has been wrapped up in a nice package of consumer information/awareness and now is finally coming to some reduced form realization.

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     Not too long ago, a committe in Switzerland was charged with trying to delineate a reasonable ethics of plant use.  The Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Gene Technology wrestled with this sticky question since the approval of experiments in genetics and subsequent funding require that the ethical dimensions of the experiment pass muster.

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Managing People in Tough Times:

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Say hello to inflation. There is no doubt that a wave of inflation is setting up to wash over the U.S.

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News comes this week that the Belgium beer brewer, InBev is considering making a move to acquire St. Louis beer maker, Anheuser-Busch. Rapid consolidation in the beer business has been going on world-wide for a long time with many of the local brews with hundreds of years of history in central and western Europe being rolled up into giants like InBev and SABMiller of London. The same has been taking place in Mexico and South America where local beers with brand value are giving way to acquisition as either next generation family members don't want to or can't manage the businesses or the economics of scale make consolidation compelling.

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News comes this week that the Belgium beer brewer, InBev is considering making a move to acquire St. Louis beer maker, Anheuser-Busch. Rapid consolidation in the beer business has been going on world-wide for a long time with many of the local brews with hundreds of years of history in central and western Europe being rolled up into giants like InBev and SABMiller of London. The same has been taking place in Mexico and South America where local beers with brand value are giving way to acquisition as either next generation family members don't want to or can't manage the businesses or the economics of scale make consolidation compelling.

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The USDA has just raised its expected food inflation numbers to 6% for 2008 on the heels of a 4.2% increase for 2007.

http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1OB?contentidonly=true&contentid=2008/05/0130.xml

My best guess is that they will be back to the well to up that again by the end of the summer. The projections show the greatest increase in food prepared at home with eggs, dairy and fats and oils categories leading the charge. Pork is estimated to increase only 1-2 percent this year.

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The USDA has just raised its expected food inflation numbers to 6% for 2008 on the heels of a 4.2% increase for 2007.

http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1OB?contentidonly=true&contentid=2008/05/0130.xml

My best guess is that they will be back to the well to up that again by the end of the summer. The projections show the greatest increase in food prepared at home with eggs, dairy and fats and oils categories leading the charge. Pork is estimated to increase only 1-2 percent this year.

read more