08/15/08 Food service merger; market prices

The University of Idaho and Washington State have merged their food science departments. The School of Food Science should benefit the Northwest's 17 billion dollar food processing industry as well as students and consumers. The school's combined faculty will number about 25 and will have an enrollment of about 75 undergraduate and 35 graduate students. Students will take required food science courses at each institution. Corn and soybean prices are trending down, so are some other commodities. There is less flood damage in the Midwest than feared and that could help to calm supermarket prices for a while. USDA economist Ephriam Leibtag says don't look for food prices to come down but do expect a slower rate of inflation next year. LEIBTAG "If these commodity prices continue to fall then we may see less of an impact going forward. I think that for the next few months we're still going to see food price inflation at the retail level at an accelerated rate, in that five to five and a half percent range but it could be as we head in 2009 that we won't see as much inflation as before so not that food prices will come back down but we'll stop seeing these increases that everyone has been experiencing over the past six months." Voice of Idaho Agriculture Bill Scott