August 24, 2007
Beautifying the World With Amazon Ingredients
By ANDREW DOWNIE
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Brazilians’ longtime devotion to the body beautiful — whether it be spending fortunes on perfumes and cosmetics, slimming down to fit into minuscule swimsuits or revealing body waxing — is paying off.
Exports of the country’s beauty products have been rising quickly in the last few years. In 2006, Brazilian companies exported $484 million of cosmetics, toiletries and fragrances, said João Carlos Basilio da Silva, president of the Brazilian Toiletry, Perfumery and Cosmetic Association. That was up 152 percent from 2001, he said.
In a retail market keen on the word “natural,” the country’s abundant supply of natural oils, fruits and plant extracts has played a crucial role, too, in the increase in sales.
The Brazilian Amazon has around 13,000 plant species, according to the agricultural research agency Embrapa. Only a tiny fraction of those plants have been comprehensively analyzed and less than 1 percent currently provide active ingredients for cosmetics, according to experts.
For years, Amazonia’s indigenous peoples have celebrated fruits for their special qualities. The guaraná berry, for example, is known as a stimulant. The fruit of the cupuaçu tree is a source of oil celebrated for its moisturizing qualities. Açai, another berry, is high in antioxidants and rich in energy. And passion fruit is used throughout Brazil to calm nerves. All are now used in making cosmetics.
Brazilian producers do not claim that those ingredients are better or healthier than those found in species growing elsewhere or that their ingredients are superior to traditional components like animal fats. But they do believe their “Brazilianness” is a major factor in the rising sales.
Industry executives in Brazil say that the country’s products are seen as somehow purer than ones from other parts of the world.
“If you pick a rose from the Amazon and a rose from the middle of France, the Brazilian one will be a lot less polluted,” said Eduardo Rauen, commercial director of Amazonia Natural, a company whose exports are expected to grow 35 to 50 percent this year. “Amazonia is more natural and that is our selling point.”
The executives also say sales have been helped by Brazilians’ image as a healthy, attractive people who go all out to look good.
“Here in Brazil we associate beauty with sensuality, spice,” said Artur Grynbaum, the executive vice president of Boticario, the beauty world’s biggest franchise operation and one with overseas sales growing by an average of 20 percent a year.
Another equally important factor is Brazil’s rich history of miscegenation. The mix of European, indigenous, African and Japanese blood has created a nation with every conceivable skin tone, hair type and body shape. Manufacturers of beauty products are forced to cater to them all, meaning that no matter which overseas market is the target, they have a product to suit.
Murumuru palm oil “is a powerful moisturizer and it is good for people with curlier hair, whether they live in Brazil, China or the United States,” said Alessandro Carlucci, the chief executive of Natura, a direct sales company that is the biggest in Brazil, with 23 percent of the domestic market.
“China has few people with curly hair, so murumuru won’t sell well there,” Mr. Carlucci said. “But in Brazil and the United States, there is an important portion of people who need their hair to be moisturized. Through the diversity of our active ingredients we can offer benefits to different countries and different ethnicities.”
The main destination for Brazilian beauty products is still South America, accounting for 61 percent of Brazil’s exports. With a domestic market of 188 million people, economies of scale enable Brazil to produce beauty products for significantly less than its neighbors. That has prompted some companies to close their operations in places like Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia and move production to Brazil, Mr. Basilio da Silva said.
Under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil, however, has expanded its export horizons. Russia, Cuba and Angola have emerged as important customers.
This effort has been aided by the Trade and Investment Promotion Agency, a government body that has been dedicated to creating and diversifying overseas markets for Brazilian goods since 2003. In conjunction with Abihpec, the agency has paid for dozens of small- and medium-size Brazilian companies to display at trade fairs across the globe, particularly in areas like the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa.
That assistance has helped people like Veronika Rezzani promote her line of products based on caipirinha, the cocktail made from sugar cane liquor and lime.
“The help from Apex was critical for me,” Ms. Rezzani said. “They helped pay for me to go to my first international trade fair in Bologna, and if it hadn’t been for them then I couldn’t have gone. They help small businesses participate in international events at reduced costs.”
There are still major obstacles to exporting for small producers. Just a year after setting up a line of caipirinha lip gloss, moisturizer, shower and bath gel, soap and exfoliating cream, Ms. Rezzani said she sells to or is negotiating deals with vendors in Denmark, Finland, France, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Britain.
She cannot take more orders because of a bureaucratic system known as the Radar.
Under Brazilian law, small producers can export up to $20,000 each year through the mail and a limited amount more via normal export channels. But registering to increase that amount involves what Mr. Basilio da Silva said was a “stupid and nonsensical” bureaucratic process. Producers like Ms. Rezzani said they could export even more if the government would just cut the red tape.
“We have all these people interested but we can’t export because of the Radar,” she said. “It makes me mad.”
Big companies are not affected by the Radar and expect to keep growing, buoyed by the Brazilian real, which is stronger against the dollar than at any time since 2000.
Looks can be deceiving, but the future looks bright.

August 29, 2007
Recipe: Eggplant, La Tavernetta Style
Time: About 30 minutes
2 pounds eggplant of any variety, the smallest you can find
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 cloves garlic, slivered
12 good cherry tomatoes, halved, or a couple plum or medium-size regular tomatoes, cored and chopped
1 cup roughly chopped basil leaves.
1. Cut eggplant into pieces about an inch or two long and no more than a half-inch wide; each piece should have a bit of skin and a bit of flesh. (If eggplant are small, cut them first in long strips, then cut them crosswise. If large, you may end up discarding or reserving the fleshy, seedy center.)
2. Put 1/3 cup oil in a skillet over medium heat; a minute later add eggplant. Cook, stirring occasionally, and seasoning with salt and pepper until very soft, about 20 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, put remaining oil in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Add garlic and cook until it colors slightly. Add tomatoes and about 2/3 of the basil, raise heat to medium, and cook, stirring occasionally, until mixture is saucy, about 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
4. When both sauce and eggplant are done, combine them. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature, or over pasta, garnished with remaining basil.
Yield: 2 to 4 servings.

August 22, 2007
Recipe: Multicolored Tomato Tartlets
2 to 3 small firm heirloom tomatoes, preferably in different colors
Flour for dusting
1 14-ounce package puff pastry, defrosted but cold
1/4 cup mascarpone, optional
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
Coarse sea salt, to taste (fleur de sel is a good choice)
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese.
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment or waxed paper. Slice stem and bottom ends from tomatoes. Slice remaining tomato crosswise into rounds 1/2 inch thick. You will need 6 or more nice rounds (see Step 2). If you like, you can cut rounds from 6 different-colored tomatoes. (Use leftover tomato for another recipe.)
2. Dust a flat surface with flour, and unfold pastry onto the surface. Cut pastry into circles about 1 inch wider than tomato slices. You will need at least 6 circles. (If your tomato slices are small and you can cut more than 6 circles out of the puff pastry, cut more rounds of both tomato and pastry. The important thing is that the pastry circles be close to an inch larger than the tomato slices.)
3. Transfer pastry to baking sheet. Spread some mascarpone, if using, over each pastry circle. Sprinkle pastry with basil; top with a tomato slice. Pinch edges of pastry up around edges of tomato. Season tomato rounds with salt and pepper. Scatter Parmesan over rounds. Bake until pastry is puffed and golden, 10 to 12 minutes. Serve warm.
Yield: 6 or more tartlets.

August 23, 2007
Life’s Work
I Lost My Laptop in Outer Space, and Other Tales of Office Theft
By LISA BELKIN
YEARS ago, back before children and bulk shopping, back when running out of something meant a separate errand, I stole a roll of toilet tissue from the office restroom. It was in the company’s interest that I stay longer rather than race out before the shops closed, I reasoned. It wasn’t stealing. It was a strategic investment of my time.
I have periodically thought of that moment with embarrassment. Who on earth steals toilet paper? Then, last month, the Government Accountability Office released a report estimating that NASA employees had stolen $94 million in office supplies and equipment over the last decade. One thief appropriated an office laptop as his own by declaring the machine lost. It had been thrown from the International Space Station, he explained, apparently with a straight face, and burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
In any workplace in America, at any moment of the day, someone is probably “borrowing” something, a loss to business of about $14 billion a year, according to the National Retail Federation. Studies find that 20 percent to 65 percent of employees admit to various degrees of supply theft at work, depending upon how the question is asked, and that those who earn the most money are most likely to be the culprits, meaning this is not really about need.
“Employees have been dipping into supplies for years,” said Vicki Donlan, a writer who specializes in the subject of business leadership. What has changed, she said, is that there is a new rationalization out there for the dipping: the portable nature of work. Home has become an extension of work, and we spend more time at work than we do at home. So if I am finishing that report on my home computer, doesn’t it make sense that my employer provide the paper for the printer? The Aeron chair?
One of the favorite stories I have collected on this subject over the years was about the office manager who filled his car with the five-gallon jugs from the water cooler, to care for his tropical fish. He then returned the empty containers.
The new laxity about what’s mine and what’s not creates a new need for businesses to clarify the rules and “give employees an opportunity to be honest about their pilfering,” Ms. Donlan said.
Her belief that what is needed is transparency, not cabinet padlocks, is shared by Dov Seidman, the chief executive and founder of LRN, a company that helps employers create ethical business environments. Mr. Seidman is the author of “How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything ... in Business (and in Life),” and he is less concerned that employees are taking supplies than that they are doing it surreptitiously.
Small transgressions are like broken windows, he said, in that not paying attention to the little things sends a message that the company will tolerate larger missteps. The solution may be as simple as not classifying minor thefts as transgressions in the first place, he said. Being open about paper clips and pencils can create an atmosphere that is open in other ways, he said.
How much borrowing is too much borrowing is one of those “shared values” that come to shape a corporate culture, Mr. Seidman said. (For the record, no one I interviewed for this article suggested that taking laptops or furniture was in remotely the same realm as taking everyday office supplies. For openers, the former is usually a felony.)
If a company “can’t agree on Post-its, they’re not going to agree on anything larger,” he said of staffs that hoard supplies.
The poisonous potential of pilfering is underlined by the fact that it is so often a result of anger. Even if employees don’t think they’re angry, said Armand DiMele, who runs the DiMele Center for Psychotherapy and Counseling in Manhattan, they probably are.
“Anybody who’s in a position of being an employee has some sense that somebody up there is more powerful,” he said, “and that breeds resentment.”
Theft certainly seems to increase during times of tension. Angela Hult watched it happen at First Interstate Bank in Portland, Ore., after it was acquired by Wells Fargo a decade ago. The merger brought layoffs, said Ms. Hult, who is no longer with the bank, and “as executives received their pink slips, a lot of artwork, office supplies, computers and even small pieces of furniture began to disappear.”
“One senior-level manager even had the company-paid magazine and newspaper subscriptions that he received at work forwarded to his home,” Ms. Hult added.
Retaliation may explain that first wave of theft, but it doesn’t explain what happened later, she said. Things began to disappear from her office on the executive floor. The thief, she discovered, was a woman who had more seniority, making it awkward to turn her in. The woman “took my artwork out of my office one evening after I left because she liked mine better than hers,” she said in an e-mail message. “About a week later she also took my chair. Eventually, she came back and took a piece of pottery, but had to return it when I informed her that it belonged to me, not the company.”
Kamille Kirk, an assistant to the president of YogaFit Inc., a fitness company based in Torrance, Calif., also has seen things disappear off her desk. Perhaps it’s because hers is the last desk before the stairway down to the supply cabinet. (Though you would think that a few steps wouldn’t stop employees of a company called YogaFit.) Pens, calculators, reams of printer paper have all up and left.
Even while she is grousing, though, Ms. Kirk is not shy about her own guilt. She has “accidentally” appropriated a calculator (“I needed to borrow it for a test, and it conveniently remained at home”) and purposely taken a box of staples (“Why buy them when our office has so many?”) and quite proudly taken an intricately styled lamp that had been sitting in the corner of the office dining area (“No one ever used it, and, to be honest, no one has noticed that it was gone”).
If it makes Ms. Kirk feel any better (though she doesn’t seem to feel terribly bad about it in the first place), Mr. DiMele said that a little stealing can be good for a workplace.
“There is an advantage to being stolen from,” he said. “If you steal from me, I own you. Unconsciously, if I’m using a Post-it that I stole from my boss, I somehow still have my boss on my mind.”
Which puts my toilet tissue caper in a whole new light.
Believe me, I will never do that again.

August 22, 2007
Ales of The Times
More or Less Pale but All Belgian
By ERIC ASIMOV
SURPRISING as it may sound, hot weather is not always easy on the beer lover. Sure, you can chase a thirst with any number of meager brews. Simply refrigerate, pop top and chug, no problem. But what does that really get you beyond a starring role in the latest frat-boy beer commercial?
You get my point. If you want something with flavor and complexity — something inspiring — that is light and refreshing as well, you have to be discerning, especially as many American microbrewers are favoring bigger, more alcoholic styles that may be delicious and complex, but are decidedly not chug-worthy.
India pale ale is a case in point. Not content with a sturdy ale awash in refreshing bitterness, many brewers are making their I.P.A.’s stronger and stronger, with a hop bitterness so aggressive it will knock anybody out of her hammock. These beers can be fascinating in the proper context, but it’s August, man! Cool me off, but don’t bowl me over.
Luckily, promising alternatives beckon. Few things beat a crisp, bracing pilsner in the sun. American pale ales, the more subdued sibling of the I.P.A.’s, are a good bet, as are traditionally made porters and stouts, as surprising as that may sound. They are not high in alcohol, and their brisk dryness is refreshing. But what I’ve been most excited about this summer are Belgian pale ales.
Whoa, I can hear beer connoisseurs saying. I’ve heard of Trappist ales and lambics, Belgian wheat beers and even Belgian red and brown ales, but pale ale?
They have a point. There is no category, strictly speaking, of Belgian pale ales. But the Belgians make a lot of beers that defy categorization. We gathered 23 that may not have a whole lot in common except that they are excellent summer quenchers.
Though colors range from a warm gold to copper, all are on the pale side of the spectrum. Some have a provocative spiciness, while others are a mite hoppy, or even a bit sour.
But what unites the best of these beers under our hodgepodge category is that they not only are dry and refreshing, they are stimulating. Many will not be easy to find. For the tasting, Florence Fabricant and I were joined by Matt Anci, beverage manager of Resto, a new Belgian restaurant in New York, and Richard Scholz, an owner of Bierkraft in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
In beers like these, with a lot going on, the key is balance. Most have assertive malt flavors, and quite a few have a restrained bitterness as well, which can balance the sweetness of the malt. The third flavor-producing element is the yeast.
Now, nobody, least of all me, wants to get bogged down in a discussion of yeast on a warm summer’s day. But hear me out.
Centuries ago, before anybody knew what caused fermentation, brewers and winemakers depended on ambient yeasts to set it off, transforming sugar into alcohol. Like sourdough bread bakers, they would scoop some beer from a fresh batch and add it to the next one to start it up. Without a clear understanding of yeasts, brewers of yore had relatively little control over their product. Nowadays, with the exception of traditional lambic beers, brewers are able to select the yeasts that will produce the flavors and characteristics they desire. The spiciness and fruitiness of these beers are all a direct result of the yeasts.
Our No. 1 brew, the Brasserie des Rocs Blonde, is a perfect example of how to combine upfront malt with a refreshing hop bitterness and lively fruit from the yeast. The balance of flavors results in a perfectly refreshing brew that perhaps in more enlightened times will be hawked all over the new Yankee Stadium.
Our No. 5 beer, the Orval Trappist ale, is another in which yeasts play a crucial role. While this beer fits in other categories, it coexists with these pale ales as well because it is so vibrant and refreshing. It’s also one of my all-time favorites, full of spice with a welcome touch of funk, courtesy of Brettanomyces, a yeast that is the devil incarnate to many winemakers. But Orval’s brewers control its use so that it adds complexity, as it does in some wines. Mets brass, are you listening as you draw up the menu for the new Citifield?
In contrast, our No. 2 brew, the De Ranke XX Bitter, is far from a typical Belgian beer. It has enough vibrant hop bitterness to appeal to any I.P.A. lover, yet it is fresh and lively, brisk and energizing, with both a pilsnerlike purity and a complexity suggestive of Belgium’s saison ales.
Our No. 3 beer, Grimbergen Blonde, is different still, emphasizing lightness and fruitiness. But even though it takes a different path, the destination — refreshment — is the same.
Like the Orval, our No. 4 beer, the Petrus Aged Pale, may take a little getting used to. It may be the oddest of all our favorites. It’s aged in barrels for 24 to 30 months. It emerges with complex citrus and herbal flavors as well as a pleasingly tart, almost sour aftertaste, like a Flemish sour ale. Calm down, wine fans: Petrus is a reference to St. Peter, not to the renowned Château Pétrus.
So it goes with these Belgian ales. Something different in every glass, whether the malty De Koninck, or the spicy, floral St. Pieters Zinnebir; the light, smooth Brugse Zot with its little fruity notes that prickle the taste buds, or the brisk, crisp, yeasty Corsendonk Abbey Pale Ale, the strongest beer on our list at 7.5 percent alcohol yet still light enough to refresh. We may have failed the taxonomy course, but when it comes to satisfaction we know what we’re doing.
Tasting Report: Solutions for a Hot Summer Day
Brasserie des Rocs Blonde $9 *** ½
25.4 ounces
Perfectly balanced, beginning with lively citrus, fruit and malt flavors and ending with refreshing hop bitterness.
(Importer: D & V International, Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.)
De Ranke XX Bitter $4.75 ***
11.2 ounces
Brisk and lively with great hop bitterness and saisonlike complexity. (Shelton Bros., Belchertown, Mass.)
Petrus Aged Pale $4.25 ***
11.2 ounces
Complex citrus and herbal flavors, refreshingly tart and sour.
(Win-It-Too, Santa Barbara, Calif.)
Orval Trappist Ale $6.50 ***
11.2 ounces
Spicy, bitter and very dry with a lingering touch of orange zest
and funk. (Merchant du Vin, Tukwila, Wash.)
Corsendonk Abbey Pale Ale $4.50 ** ½
(Agnus Trippel) 12 ounces
Brisk and refreshing with fruity flavors and a crisp bitterness.
(Phoenix Imports, Baltimore)
Brugse Zot $4 ** ½
11.2 ounces
Lightly fruity, smooth and refreshing; Pilsner-like with an ale texture.
(Win-It-Too, Santa Barbara, Calif.)
Affligem Blond $2.10 ** ½
12 ounces
Light, foamy and gulpable with well-balanced malt and hop flavors. (Star Brand Imports, White Plains)
De Koninck $3 ** ½
11.2 ounces
Amber with a malty, mineral earthiness and refreshing bitterness. (Belukus Marketing, Houston)
St. Pieters Zinnebir $12 ** ½
25.4 ounces
Light and lively with floral and spicy citrus aromas and flavors.
(Shelton Bros., Belchertown, Mass.)
BEST VALUE
Grimbergen Blonde $2.35 ***
11.2 ounces
Light, foamy and fresh with lingering fruit flavors.
(Scottish & Newcastle Importers, San Rafael, Calif.)

August 16, 2007
Virus Spreading Alarm and Pig Disease in China
By DAVID BARBOZA
CHENGDU, China, Aug. 9 — A highly infectious swine virus is sweeping China’s pig population, driving up pork prices and creating fears of a global pandemic among domesticated pigs.
Animal virus experts say Chinese authorities are playing down the gravity and spread of the disease.
So far, the mysterious virus — believed to cause an unusually deadly form of an infection known as blue-ear pig disease — has spread to 25 of this country’s 33 provinces and regions, prompting a pork shortage and the strongest inflation in China in a decade.
More than that, China’s past lack of transparency — particularly over what became the SARS epidemic — has created global concern.
“They haven’t really explained what this virus is,” says Federico A. Zuckermann, a professor of immunology at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine. “This is like SARS. They haven’t sent samples to any international body. This is really irresponsible of China. This thing could get out and affect everyone.”
There are no clear indications that blue-ear disease — if that is what this disease is — poses a threat to human health.
Though the Chinese government acknowledges that the current virus has devastated pig stocks in coastal and southern areas, it has not admitted what experts say is clear: the virus is rapidly moving inland and westward, to areas such as this one in Sichuan Province, China’s largest pork-producing region.
“This disease is like a wind that swept in and passed from village to village,” said Ding Shurong, a 45-year-old farmer in a village near here who lost two-thirds of his pigs . “I’ve never seen anything like it. No family was left untouched.”
No one knows for sure how many of this country’s 500 million pigs have been infected. The government says officially that about 165,000 pigs have contracted the virus this year. But in a country that, on average, loses 25 million pigs a year to disease, few believe the figures. In part, the skepticism comes from the fact that pork prices have skyrocketed 85 percent in the last year — an increase that, absent other factors, suggests the losses from disease are more widespread than Beijing admits.
And there are other signs. Field experts are reporting widespread disease outbreaks. Fear among pig farmers that their livestock will contract the disease has led to panic selling. And the government and media here have issued alarming reports that farmers are selling diseased or infected pigs to illegal slaughterhouses, which could pose food safety problems.
International health experts are already calling this one of the worst disease outbreaks ever to hit Asia’s livestock industry, and they fear the fast-mutating pathogens could spread to neighboring countries, igniting a worldwide epidemic that could affect pork supplies everywhere.
A similar virus has already been detected in neighboring Vietnam and Myanmar, and health experts are trying to determine if it came from China.
Health experts say China has declined to send tissue samples to testing labs outside the country for independent verification by a lab affiliated with the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris.
The Chinese government says that it has reported the disease to international health bodies and insists that the disease is under control and that a vaccine has been developed and distributed.
But, some scientists say there is no truly effective vaccine against blue-ear pig disease (which is also known as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome); other experts say they are not even certain that the blue-ear virus is the one that is spreading.
Scientists who track blue-ear pig disease are puzzled because the disease is generally not so deadly.
“This virus generally makes them ill but on its own it doesn’t cause a lot of deaths,” said Steven McOrist, a professor of pig medicines at the University of Nottingham in England. “The evidence they put up so far is not conclusive.”
If it is blue-ear pig disease, which has infected most parts of the world, including the United States, it may be a new and more virulent strain.
“This is more severe than we’ve seen elsewhere,” said Derek Armstrong, a senior veterinary scientist at the Meat and Livestock Commission in Britain. “It may be a co-infection of pigs with other things.”
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is now pressing China to share its research and tissue samples.
“I’ve asked my two vets in Beijing to work with the government and get some of those samples out,” said Juan Lubroth, head of infectious disease at the F.A.O., noting that China has reported its own findings on the disease. “Our experience has shown us that working with carrots is better than working with sticks.”
Government scientists themselves said that last year the virus affected two millions pigs and killed 400,000. Here in Sichuan province, home to some 55 million pigs and one of the world’s most densely populated pig breeding areas, there is devastation. Many pig farmers say that what appears to be the blue-ear virus swept through this region in June and July, killing thousands of pigs.
“First they refused to eat, then they got high fever,” said Zhao Yanjun, 32, who lost all but 5 of his 150 pigs, just months after building a modern barn in Heishi village, about an hour’s drive southwest of Chengdu. “Now, there’s nothing left.”
Liu Minghong, a 38-year-old farmer, said, “Most of my pigs got hit in June and July — 70 of them died.” sitting in a dusty house on the edge of his property, He pulled out a notepad that cataloged the demise of his pigs.
“I sold a lot out of panic,” he says.
Pig farmers who did not sell watched their pigs succumb to a disease that ate away at their insides in a matter of weeks, often turning the pig’s ear blue. In Mr. Liu’s barn, he pointed to one pig that was little more than a skeleton, shivering in a corner, struggling for life.
Now, slaughterhouses here go wanting.
“Last year we slaughtered 1,000 pigs a day; now we’re doing 100,” said Yuan Zi, a manager at the Qiyuan Meal slaughterhouse near the city of Qionglai. “We’ve laid off nearly half the staff.”
Officials in Beijing worry that widespread pork shortages and soaring food prices could prompt panic, unrest or inflation, undermining a sizzling economy.
Trying to contain the damage, the government has announced a series of emergency measures, offering aid, incentives and free vaccines to farmers.
But the government has also warned against price gouging, and vowed to crack down on farmers selling diseased pigs, or injecting a pig with water to bolster its selling weight.
Still, many here say the problem is that pigs are simply in short supply, and it may take months if not a year or two to restock supplies, assuming the disease does not linger, as some scientists say it generally does.
Many experts, meanwhile, worry that China, which the F.A.O. says is the fourth-largest exporter of live and slaughtered hogs, could already be exporting the disease.
“This is already considered to be a threat to the global industry,” said Trevor Drew, head of virology at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Weybridge, in southeast England. “It would be naïve to think we could contain this virus.”

August 16, 2007
Parents Warned Cough Medicines Imperil Infants
By GARDINER HARRIS
WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 — Hoping to halt the growing number of injuries to infants and toddlers, the Food and Drug Administration issued an advisory Wednesday warning parents never to give cough and cold medicines to children under the age of 2 unless instructed to do so by a doctor.
The warning is part of a broad reassessment by the agency of the safety of the popular medicines, which have been blamed for hundreds of adverse reactions and a handful of deaths in children under the age of 2.
The F.D.A. will convene a panel of independent experts on Oct. 18 to discuss whether more prohibitions or warnings are warranted. Such meetings often signal that the agency is seriously concerned about the safety of the drugs under review.
The drugs’ labels currently advise parents to see a doctor before giving the medicines if their child is under the age of 2, but too many parents are failing to heed this advice, the agency said.
“We continue to see adverse effects associated with the medicines because people are not using them properly,” said Susan Cruzan, an F.D.A. spokeswoman.
If, despite label warnings, parents continue to use the drugs inappropriately in young children, the agency could take more serious action, like restricting the drugs’ wide availability.Most drugs that have been withdrawn in the past 15 years were taken off the market because doctors and patients failed to heed prominent warnings.
Some prominent pediatricians and public health experts said that the drug agency’s advisory did not go far enough.
One group petitioned the agency to ban the marketing of the drugs for children under the age of 6, and some said that the medicines should no longer be sold over-the-counter for use in children at all.
“Unless convincing evidence shows that these medications are effective for children, their easy availability to families should be re-examined,” said Dr. Ian M. Paul, a pediatrician at Penn State Children’s Hospital in Hershey, Pa.
But the drugs’ makers say that the F.D.A. approved the drugs because they are safe and effective. Virginia Cox, a spokeswoman for the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, said that the drugs’ labels already advised against their use in children under the age of 2 unless a doctor approved. Ms. Cox said there was no need to raise this age limit to 6.
Some of the drugs have drawings or pictures of infants in diapers on their labels.
The debate results because the standards for drug approvals have changed sharply in the decades since many of the medicines in children’s cough and cold products were approved. If those drugs were currently up for review, they would not be approved for use in children because the manufacturers never tested them thoroughly in children.
Instead, the drugs’ makers performed studies in adults and then simply assumed that they would work in children. Such assumptions, once common, are no longer acceptable. Indeed, a growing number of studies in children suggest that cough and cold medicines work no better than placebos.
Among the ingredients that have caused concern are anticough medicines including dextromethorphan, which is the DM in many preparations. They can cause neurological problems, including abnormal movements and hallucinations, even in standard doses.
Another is pseudoephedrine, which is a decongestant that has been associated with infant deaths, increased blood pressure and arrhythmias.
Some of the injuries and deaths associated with these products have resulted when parents gave two different products to their child, not realizing that both contained identical medicines, resulting in an overdose.
In rare cases, children have been injured when given recommended doses.
Everyone agrees that more studies in children are needed, but companies have little incentive to undertake new trials because the medicines’ patents long ago expired. So the F.D.A. must decide how to regulate drugs that it knows very little about — a position in which it frequently finds itself. In such circumstances, it often turns to advisory boards.
Despite the growing worries, sales of the drugs are booming. Most major pharmacies carry a dozen or more brands. The medicines are popular largely because children have an average of 6 to 10 colds each year, far more than adults.
Even those who petitioned the agency to raise the age limit on the drugs said that dramatic regulatory action against the drugs was unlikely.
Dr. Wayne R. Snodgrass, a petition author who is chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on drugs, predicted that the advisory committee would recommend stronger wording on the drugs’ labels, not an outright ban.
“Personally in a common cold in a young child, I wouldn’t recommend these agents,” Dr. Snodgrass said.
Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, commissioner of the Baltimore City Health Department and an author of the petition, applauded the F.D.A.’s decision to hold an advisory committee meeting and predicted it would lead to changes in the way the agency regulates the drugs.
“Having an advisory committee meeting is a good way for the F.D.A. to switch gears on this,” Dr. Sharfstein said.

August 8, 2007
The Energy Challenge
Cooking Up More Uses for the Leftovers of Biofuel Production
By HILLARY ROSNER
The baking tins and muffin cups lining the countertops in a corner of Ronald Holser’s cluttered laboratory were filled with curious substances resembling angel food cakes and loaves of bread.
But Mr. Holser did not advise eating them. The concoctions were prototypes for biodegradable weed barriers and sticky films intended to hold grass seeds on the ground long enough to germinate.
If Mr. Holser, a research chemist, and his colleague Steven F. Vaughn, a plant physiologist, are successful, they will have found more than ecologically friendly ways to fight weeds and grow grass.
They will have found innovative uses for a byproduct of the production of biodiesel fuel, glycerol. This, in turn, could help transform the biodiesel industry into something that more closely resembles the petroleum industry, where fuel is just one of many profitable products.
“Just like petroleum refineries make more than one product that are the feedstock for other industries, the same will have to be true for biofuels,” said Kenneth F. Reardon, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. “Biorefining is what the vision has to look like in the end.”
Glycerol is used in a variety of products, including foods, soap and dynamite. But as biodiesel fuel production in the United States has risen, the market for glycerol has become saturated.
If scientists like Mr. Holser, who works at the United States Department of Agriculture’s research center in Athens, Ga., and Mr. Vaughn, who works at the department’s National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, Ill., can expand the number of valuable uses for the syrupy liquid, biodiesel makers could sell their glycerol instead of paying someone to haul it away.
“Every week I get at least one or two calls from biodiesel producers who have all this glycerol and don’t know what to do with it,” Mr. Holser said.
Glycerol, also called glycerin, is not the only byproduct of biofuel production that is the subject of experiments. Scientists are also looking at profiting from the leftovers from the production of corn ethanol and cellulosic ethanol, made from materials like switch grass, corn husks and prairie grass. Around the country, scientists, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are becoming increasingly interested in making more than fuel out of the raw materials for biodiesel fuel and ethanol.
“The opportunity, as we think about increasing our consumption of biologically derived fuels, is to consider what besides fuels can we make,” said Erik Straser, general partner of MDV Mohr Davidow Ventures, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park, Calif.
Some researchers, like Mr. Holser, are simply trying to find new uses for the regular byproducts of biofuels: distillers’ dry grain from corn ethanol and lignin from cellulosic ethanol.
Other researchers are trying to develop technologies and processes that could yield different, more valuable byproducts. And still others are placing their bets on “biorefineries.”
In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, not far from the Coors brewery in Golden, Colo., PureVision Technology is making lignin. A natural compound that helps provide strength and rigidity in plants, lignin makes up 15 to 25 percent of most plants.
Most plans for cellulosic ethanol processing call for burning the lignin to generate steam and heat to run the process. As a fuel, lignin is worth around $40 a ton.
PureVision has devised a way to make a different form of lignin — one with a molecular composition that could make it an attractive material for a variety of industrial products like glues, sealants and detergents.
Ed Lehrburger, PureVision’s founder and chief executive, said he thought his lignin could sell for $300 a ton or more. Mr. Lehrburger said his company was collaborating with a wood and paper products manufacturer that is interested in using the lignin for a biobased glue for its laminates, plywoods and other products.
“Lignin is going to be one of the big drivers of the switch from oil-based to biobased products,” Mr. Lehrburger predicted.
In Ames, Iowa, Victor Lin has created a technology that changes the production process for biodiesel. Among other attributes, Mr. Lin’s invention yields a higher quality form of glycerol, which could be more easily converted into useful industrial materials. A chemistry professor and the associate director of the Center for Catalysis at Iowa State University, Mr. Lin is also the founder of a company, Catilin, which is backed by an initial $3 million in venture financing from MDV.
The production of biodiesel fuel requires a catalyst. Mr. Lin created a catalyst that is safer and easier to use than the one commonly used now, reducing the cost of producing biodiesel and its impact on the environment (requiring less water, for instance).
Dr. Lin and his colleagues are trying to turn the resulting glycerol into a substance called 1,3 propanediol, or PDO, the base material for a substance used in upholstery, carpets, clothing and other applications. DuPont uses PDO to make its Sorona line of fabrics.
“For every gallon of biodiesel you make, you make a pound of glycerol,” said George Kraus, a professor of chemistry at Iowa State, where he is director of the Center for Catalysis and a collaborator of Mr. Lin. “A lot of people have been contacting us about burning it, and we say there have to be better uses.”
The price of glycerol, now 20 to 50 cents a pound, could drop as low as 5 cents a pound as biodiesel production increases.
Mr. Kraus said the higher quality glycerol made with the new process could command a much higher price. “What we see,” he said, “is an opportunity to make something that might cost 80 cents a pound.”
In another lab at Iowa State, Robert C. Brown is using distillers’ dry grain —a main byproduct of corn ethanol that is largely sold as animal feed — to produce hydrogen and a compound called PHA. Mr. Brown hopes his version of PHA, which is biodegradable, could be used for surgical gowns and gloves that must now be disposed of as medical waste.
“Critics of corn ethanol like to say the process isn’t very efficient,” Mr. Brown said. “Part of that is because your products aren’t just fuel.” Finding other high-value applications, he added, lets producers “justly say, this is not a waste stream; it adds to the profitability of the plant.“
Back in Peoria, Mr. Vaughn is also looking at making products from distillers’ dry grain, including another biofuel. The grain is more than 10 percent oil, and one ton of it can yield 30 gallons of biodiesel.
Interest in the biorefinery model is not limited to research scientists and start-up companies. Archer Daniels Midland is expanding some of its wet mill plants, which already churn out ethanol and a variety of other corn-based materials like high-fructose corn syrup, amino acids and sorbitol, to make industrial products. It has begun making propylene glycol, a widely used compound, from glycerol.
“As petroleum prices increase and we try to become more independent with regard to energy and petroleum in general,” said Mark Matlock, senior vice president for research at the company, which is based in Decatur, Ill., “there are other opportunities that come up for industrial chemicals as well as fuels.”
But despite the many uses for byproducts, the biorefinery model is more difficult than it may seem. “The dream is the multiproduct biorefinery,” said Jim McMillan, manager of biorefining process research and development at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. “The challenge is that the market for the fuels is like two orders of magnitude bigger than for even a fairly big chemical” that could be produced alongside the fuel.

August 8, 2007
Ethanol Is Feeding Hot Market for Farmland
By MONICA DAVEY
DEKALB, Ill. — While much of the nation worries about a slumping real estate market, people in Midwestern farm country are experiencing exactly the opposite. Take, for instance, the farm here — nearly 80 acres of corn and soybeans off a gravel road in a universe of corn and soybeans — that sold for $10,000 an acre at auction this spring, a price that astonished even the auctioneer.
“If they had seen that day, they would have never believed it,” Penny Layman said of her sister and brother-in-law, who paid $32,000 for the entire spread in 1962 and whose deaths led to the sale.
Skyrocketing farmland prices, particularly in states like Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, giddy with the promise of corn-based ethanol, are stirring new optimism among established farmers. But for younger farmers, already rare in this graying profession, and for small farmers with dreams of expanding and grabbing a piece of the ethanol craze, the news is oddly grim. The higher prices feel out of reach.
“It’s extremely frustrating,” said Paul Burrs, who farms about 400 acres near Dixon, Ill., and says he regularly bids on new farmland in the hopes of renting it. Mostly, he said, he loses out to higher bidders. “I crunch the numbers and go as high as I can. But then that’s it. There’s nothing more I can do.”
Mr. Burrs, who is 28, had a grandfather and a stepgrandfather who farmed. “So I guess it’s in my blood,” he said, “that feeling that you’ve got to do this, you were meant to do this.”
Still, he said, he believes that to make it a viable, “not quite so lean” full-time career, he needs to work more acres. Just the other day, he called about a farm that was up for rent. He did not get it.
“You keep trying to fight your battles,” Mr. Burrs said, “but it’s frustrating and hard, and sometimes I think, ‘Why am I doing this?’ ”
In central Illinois, prime farmland is selling for about $5,000 an acre on average, up from just over $3,000 an acre five years ago, a study showed. In Nebraska, meanwhile, land values rose 17 percent in the first quarter of this year over the same time last year, the swiftest such gain in more than a quarter century, said Jason R. Henderson, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City.
A federal-government analysis of farm real estate values released Friday showed record average-per-acre values across the country. The analysis said property prices averaged $2,160 an acre at the start of 2007, up 14 percent from a year earlier.
“For everyone who owns an acre of land, we love this,” said Dale E. Aupperle, a professional farm manager and real estate consultant in Decatur, Ill., who said the rising land values were being driven by rising commodity prices (though corn has dropped some since June) and the prospect of increased demand for ethanol.
“For everyone who doesn’t own an acre of land, these prices mean it gets a little harder to get into,” Mr. Aupperle added. “For an entry-level land owner or a renter, there’s a bit of a thought right now that the train is leaving and I’m not on it.”
In Iowa, which produces more corn and is home to more ethanol plants than any other state, farm rental prices are mimicking purchase prices: they were up about 10 percent this spring over a year ago, according to a study by William Edwards, a professor at Iowa State University who said it was the largest jump since he started tracking farm rents in 1994.
And ethanol is leaving marks everywhere. New grain bins seem to be popping up all around the Midwest, farmers from Indiana to South Dakota say, and some of the highest farmland prices have been seen around the nearly 200 existing or proposed ethanol plants, where the cost of transporting the corn would be the cheapest. Mr. Henderson said he heard that land close to such facilities, most of which are in the Midwest, had jumped by as much as 30 percent over a year ago.