11/5/08 Drop in Food & Lamy Seeks Second Term

Drop in Food & Lamy Seeks Second Term plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Commodity prices have been coming down for quite some time now. Retail food prices have not. But, that may be about to change. It is being reported that grocery chains are beginning to balk at price increases from food processor suppliers. According to the Wall Street Journal, some retailers are using food companies' earnings reports as leverage to reject price increases. Others are pushing for more promotional allowances such as buy-one-get-one-free deals to help them move higher volumes. Economist Ephraim Leibtag talks about what's behind how manufacturers and retailers decide to price commodities. LEIBTAG: When manufacturers try to raise costs, it really comes down to their bargaining power. They'd always like to raise their prices if they think they can make more money that way. So now it's really an issue of timing. We all see the commodity food ingredient prices going down and so the question is who's still paying the old prices that were much higher this summer and who's getting into new contracts where the prices are much lower. General Council chairperson Bruce Gosper informed WTO members yesterday that Director-General Pascal Lamy has announced he will seek a second term in office when his current term expires in 2009. The procedure requires the incumbent to declare he is a candidate for a second term by the end of November. After that, the election is open until the end of December for additional nominations. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray. As if it wasn't bad enough already, the newest report on milk tainted with melamine in China is that the routine spiking of milk with illicit substances was nothing new and not a secret undertaking as the world was first led to believe. Farmers in China's milk industry say that the mystery "protein powder" has been in use for years in an effort to fool dairy companies' quality checks. The excuse being offered up by officials in China for this abhorrent practice is that "small scale dairy farmers are hard to police and few have the capital and know how to adhere to good dairy farming practices." Please, it doesn't take a mass amount of capital and experience to know right from wrong! The introducing of a chemical substance into the milk supply while knowing full well it poses great health risks to those who consume it is an obvious wrong in any language. Having been under intense scrutiny, China's milk industry leaders now say they expect that the use of melamine in milk has largely stopped. There is no margin for error here people! It has to stop, period. Your children are dying. Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.