Living-Today: Issues of modern living

SAFEGUARDING OUR FOOD

The government and the private sector took steps Friday to head off a potential nightmare -- a terrorist attack on the nation's food supply.

An FBI official and an official of the Washington-based Food Marketing Institute signed an agreement to create a Food Industry Sharing and Analysis Center.

The center, or ISAC, is only the latest public-private effort to protect a portion of the nation's infrastructure. The National Infrastructure Protection Center, a multi-agency unit within the FBI, has set up similar ISACs with the electrical power, telecommunications, information technology and water supply industries.

At the signing ceremony at the FBI, Ronald Dick, NIPC director and the assistant FBI director for counter-terrorism, said, "The NIPC understands the importance of working with the private sector .... We are now proud to add the food sector to this important (ISAC) partnership."

Tim Hammonds, president and CEO of the Food Marketing Institute, said after the signing his industry understands that after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, "all of America's strategic infrastructure industries are now on the front line of terrorism."

The Food Industry ISAC will have a threefold mission: providing information and analysis to help the food industry report and reduce its vulnerability to malacious attacks; help the NIPC and the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Unit identify credible threats and issue warning messages for the industry, and supply experts to help the NIPC and the FBI assess specific threats. It will be manned by Food Market Institute personnel and will use FMI assets.

Hammonds's group represents most of the nation's food retailers and wholesalers. Its 2,300 members -- everyone from family-owned stores to the large supermarket chains -- operate approximately 26,000 stores with a combined annual sales volume of $340 billion, three-fourths of all food retail sales in the United States.

BLOCKING TELEMARKETERS

The Center for Democracy and Technology said in a recent report that a federal law should allow all consumers to block their phone numbers from unwanted telemarketers.

The think tank is endorsing a Federal Trade Commission proposal that would allow consumers to put their names on a national "Do Not Call" registry page that would prohibit companies from soliciting their products to them over the telephone.

This issue has become more important to consumers with the advent of the rampant sharing of Internet lists among telemarketers. How much privacy Internet consumers should have -- in other words, should their marketing information be sold by the Internet companies they do business with -- is being debated in Congress.

But the emphasis on privacy "fell off the radar screen after Sept. 11 and with the passage of President Bush's Patriot Act in November, which gives the government broad authority to get information on people," said Robert Litan, vice president and director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution.

The new FTC proposal would amend the agency's Telemarketing Sales Rule that limits the times that telemarketing calls can be made to between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., and prohibits telemarketers from lying or misrepresenting their products.

Twelve states already have "do not call" registry lists, with varying degrees of mandatory compliance. The Direct Marketing Association has a "do not call" list that isn't widely publicized, and the list only applies to DMA members. And some marketers have their own "do not call" lists, but there is no one place where consumers can go to ask to be taken off all calling lists, says the CDT.

"We feel strongly that individuals should be able to have a choice -- as many choices as possible -- whether to receive telemarketing calls at all, at certain times during the day, or during certain days of the week," said Ari Schwartz, CDT's associate director.

Litan says consumers are ripe for this national law, that Americans are universally fed up with unsolicited telemarketing, and that this is a bipartisan issue. "Protection from telemarketing is strongly supported by the American public," he said. "I almost think this ranks up there with motherhood and apple pie. I think it's significant that it is a Bush agency that is proposing this. The FTC has strong deregulation credentials, yet it is proposing a new rule to protect privacy."

DESEGREGATION LAWSUIT

A federal judge has approved a $500 million settlement in a 27-year-old class-action desegregation lawsuit that claimed the state of Mississippi neglected its historically black colleges.

Friday's agreement signed by U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers Jr. calls for the state to spend $246 million over the next 17 years on academic programs at three universities -- Jackson State, Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley State. Additional endowment funds are to be made available to the historically black schools if they have at least 10 percent non-black enrollment for three years in a row. Funds specified in the agreement would go towards capital improvement, private endowments and other programs such as summer classes.

The decision ends a lawsuit filed in 1975 by the late Jake Ayers Sr. on behalf of his son and 21 other students who claimed the state funded black colleges at a lower level than the Mississippi's five predominantly white universities. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with Ayers' discrimination claims in 1992 and sent the case back to district court. Since then, Biggers said, Mississippi has ended any discriminatory practices at its universities and is "in full compliance with the law."

ICE CREAM

Scientists say they may have a solution to the $11 billion ice cream industry's biggest headache of all -- how to keep the frozen treat smooth and creamy when stored in the freezer. The cool solution may lie in varieties of wheat that can survive the harsh Canadian winter, said food science professor Douglas Goff of the University of Guelph, near Toronto.

Despite changes over the past hundred years in the way ice cream is made, it still goes coarse and grainy after a few weeks in the freezer, Goff told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston Sunday.

Unless eaten quickly, ice crystals in the confection grow during stored, making the ice cream less creamy, Goff said. The spoilage is speeded up if the ice cream is stored in a place where the temperature goes up and down, such as a frost-free refrigerator.

But winter wheat -- a plant that can live through sub-zero temperatures -- contains proteins that prevent ice crystals from growing. Goff said his lab is currently trying to use those proteins to make ice cream that stays smooth.

The idea will not leave a bad taste in the mouths of consumers, Goff said, because the wheat proteins are entirely natural. "There's no biotechnology in it whatsoever," he said, "just a product of nature."