Production: Page 187

Something To Chew On: What it means to be green

Like Kermit the Frog on the popular children's TV show Sesame Street, consumers and manufacturers alike are finding that it's not easy being green. But given our many finite natural resources and the very real economic, technological and ecological limits to what we can develop, we have to start somewhere

Brand Insights

Plasma: A Multi-Faceted Ingredient Supporting Health, Formula Functionality, and Nutrition in Pet Food

APC Inc

Discover how plasma protein supports pet health, boosts palatability, and improves pet food functionality and processing performance in modern formulations.

Plasma: A Multi-Faceted Ingredient Supporting Health, Formula Functionality, and Nutrition in Pet Food

The rise of petfood retailing

It just keeps getting better for the petfood industry. In emerging markets, the combination of income growth, increasing urbanization and better marketing is creating favorable conditions for petfood sales.

The five leading international retailers are Wal-Mart, Carrefour, Tesco, Metro Group and A.S. Watson Group. They are already present in many developing markets, and local retailers will have to work hard to compete.

Success from Sweden

Sweden is celebrated for its untouched, beautiful countryside and outstanding natural environment. In order to protect this national asset, Sweden has imposed some of the toughest environmental legislation in the world. Lantmännen Doggy AB is proud of this Swedish legacy, which it translates in its product line, marketed under the brand Bozita.

Niklas SiwersjÃ¶, export director of LantmÃ¤nnen Doggy AB, with his dogs Rogstabergets Jackson Browne and Lokkebergets I JÃ¤ger Browne.

Functional fixes

The rising popularity of petfoods containing functional ingredients can be traced to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994. This US legislation restricted some of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) authority to act against functional ingredients as unapproved food additives. This led to a vast influx of such products for people and influenced similar trends in petfood.

Gourmetceuticals markets PPL-240, an antioxidant derived from a South American fern (Polypodium leucotomos). It has been clinically proven to protect cells against the damaging effects of free radicals. The FDA (US) has approved it for both human and animal consumption (www.gourmetceuticals.com).

Downloading the human brain

In The Singularity is Near, futurist Ray Kurzweil examines what he calls the next step in our evolutionary progress: the union of humans and computers. He believes that the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed and knowledge-sharing ability of computers

Futurist Ray Kurzweil sees an astonishing future in which technological progress will create a utopia.

Cool down costs, heat up progress

Cost-efficiency and energy-efficiency in particular, combined with high quality production, is an increasingly hot topic for every manufacturing sector. In the case of the petfood industry, a great benefit in this regard can be obtained through optimized use of drying and cooling systems.

Counterflow dryers, like this example from Geelen Counterflow, already have over 50% market share in countries such as Japan, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Argentina.