Lynley Hargreaves • Oct 28, 2016 •
Dr Skelte Anema Value-added milk products are likely to continue their rise, says new Royal Society of New Zealand Fellow Dr Skelte Anema. That means we’ll keep moving away from commodities like dried milk powder and export more expensive products such as fresh and long-life liquid milk and cream. A Principal Research Scientist at the Fonterra Research and Development Centre, … Read More
Robert Hickson • Mar 13, 2016 •
I can’t help thinking whether Fonterra, and NZ’s dairy industry, would be in a better position now if they’d devoted some (more) resources to strategic foresight. They may have, but it isn’t evident so far. What is “strategic foresight”, and what, if anything, is it good for? Strategic foresight, which is being used increasingly now in the private sector rather … Read More
Cindy Baxter • Aug 19, 2015 •
Cross-posted from Coal Action Network Aotearoa As the country reeled with the news last week that Solid Energy had gone into administration with a $300m debt, another event was happening in the Pacific that puts the debate in a context that it too seldom receives in New Zealand. On Thursday, Kiribati Prime Minister Anote Tong … Read More
Siouxsie Wiles • Jan 14, 2014 •
The reputation of NZ’s dairy giant Fonterra is taking another bashing with the announcement* of a voluntary recall of 8,700 bottles of cream** after tests indicated they may be contaminated with the food-poisoning bacterium Escherichia coli. So what is E. coli, how did it get in the cream and should we all be panicking? 1. What is … Read More
Siouxsie Wiles • Oct 29, 2013 •
Today saw the release of the report by the independent inquiry into the contamination of whey powder that lead to the Fonterra botulism scare in August this year. At 165 pages its not exactly light reading. The inquiry team, comprised of Jack Hodder QC (a lawyer), Jacob Heida (an expert in whey production processes and standards … Read More
Siouxsie Wiles • Sep 09, 2013 •
The Fonterra ‘not botulism’ story continues to rumble on with Crown Research Institute AgResearch releasing a statement saying they didn’t confirm botulism in the Fonterra samples they ran through the mouse bioassay, merely flagged the need for further testing. Then came the revelation that it was the death of one mouse out of five … Read More
Siouxsie Wiles • Sep 01, 2013 •
MPI says Fonterra whey powder not contaminated with botulism-toxin producing bacterium. Over the past few days I’ve been contacted by a number of journalists asking how this case of mistaken identity could have been made. “What did they do wrong?” has been the main question. To answer that we need to know all the details of the experiments and see … Read More
Guest Work • Aug 16, 2013 •
by Dr Heather Hendrickson, Lecturer, Molecular Biosciences, Institute of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, Massey University When anthrax spores (Bacillus anthracis) were sent in the mail in the US, the response was media hype and mass hysteria. In the aftermath, there were calls for routine detection and some of these have been put into place. Dr. Heather Hendrickson In fact, the Anthrax … Read More
Siouxsie Wiles • Aug 15, 2013 •
According to an article in the Stuff, Matamata veterinarian Frank Rowson says the contamination of Fonterra’s whey powder with the toxin-producing bacterium Clostridium botulinum is linked to contamination of the food chain by glyphosate weed killers. Glyphosate is better known as the Monsanto product Round Up, to which the company developed genetically resistant crops … Read More
Michael Edmonds • Aug 11, 2013 •
As Fonterra continues to deal with the fall out from the botulinum contamination scare, it has been suggested that New Zealand companies such as Fonterra might benefit from having scientists or engineers on their Boards of Directors. In an interview on The Nation this weekend Professor Jacqueline Rowarth, Professor of Agribusiness at the University of Waikato, spoke about Fonterra’s … Read More