Archive for April 19th, 2013
Unilever will share about safe food products’ design & manufacturing
SHANGHAI, April 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — The standards of food safety differs when crossing multiple country or regional borders. While “hazard-based decision-making” has been, and often still is, the norm, governments around the world (lead by Codex Alimentarius, FAO, and WHO) are adopting Risk Analysis (RA) as the framework for risk-based decision-making. Unilever has adopted this governmental model to risk-based decision-making and the science/technologies involved in it into our food safety assurance approach to innovating and marketing food products.
Food standards define essential aspects of the safety and quality of food in international trade as well as public health related to food. While food is more and more traded over long distances, there are different food standards from one country or region to the next. Global organisations such as Codex Alimentarius have, under the auspices of the parent organizations of FAO and WHO, guides its members through an evolution of food safety control based on hazards, providing risk-based guidance on the best food safety management practices, and setting standards related to consumer risk. Large scientific bodies such as JECFA, JMPR, and JEMRA provide the scientific input into the risk management committees of Codex Alimentarius.
Importantly, food safety relies on adequate control of all relevant hazards; chemical, physical, or biological. Current best practice systems for food safety management (GAP-GMP-GHP, HACCP) can achieve a very high level of food safety assurance when they are deployed faithfully and consistently, and are based on a sound product concept. It is a misconception that testing alone or even HACCP alone can deliver safe food. Rather, the combination of a good product and process design, good deployment using best practice systems, and selective use of testing for validation and verification is the overall package that is needed for reliable food safety assurance. While this is not a radically new insight at all, current practices around the world do not always reflect this thinking and societies’ views of what constitutes a safe food product is a dynamic aspect both in time and in place. Food safety standards and other “metrics” reflecting safe foods vary tremendously between countries and/or regions, and the rational for this is not always evident or scientifically supported.
Food safety management in the international context is constantly evolving since it started to become more harmonized globally over the last 100 years. While “hazard-based decision-making” has originally been, and often still is, the norm, governments around the world (lead by Codex Alimentarius, FAO and WHO) are adopting Risk Analysis (RA) as the framework for risk-based decision-making. This framework provides a structured and systematic foundation for modern food safety management as it supports a responsible move away from mere hazard-based to more risk-based food safety control at the governmental level. As part of the framework and in the area of food safety microbiology, several new risk metrics have been designed to link country public health policies with operational control of the food present on the market. Unilever has adopted this governmental model to risk-based decision-making and the science/technologies involved in it into our food safety assurance approach to innovating and marketing food products. This approach consists of establishing a safe design based on pertinent knowledge/data, informed selection of processes and control measures to prevent, eliminate or adequately control significant hazards, and validation and verification by useful testing during the product innovation and product manufacturing.
Dr. Leon Gorris, Regulatory Affairs from Unilever will share more details and best practices about risk management and how to design and manufacture safe and innovative food products during the Food Safety & Quality Control China Conference in June. Check here more details about his presentation,
Wild Pollinators, Critical in Global Food Production
ARLINGTON, Virginia /PRNewswire/ — Two recently released studies co-authored by Christina M. Kennedy, Senior Scientist of The Nature Conservancy, in collaboration with a team of 50 international scientists, underscore the importance of wild bees to global food production.
The reports, published in the journals of Science and Ecology Letters, examined trends in insect pollinators – bees in particular – and their pollination services on at least 600 fields from about 40 crop systems across Australia, Brazil, U.K., Mexico, Argentina, Germany, Sweden, U.S., Canada, Japan, South Africa, Israel, Costa Rica, Kenya, Indonesia, India, Uganda, Poland, Switzerland and New Zealand. These combined studies illustrate the impact of field practices and landscape design on the health of wild bees, and find that wild bees pollinate staple food crops such as almonds, apples, blueberries, canola, cranberries, coffee, grapefruit, macadamia, squash, tomatoes, and watermelon, more effectively than managed honeybees.
While domesticated honeybees, often used by farmers, transported more pollen from plant to plant, wild bees proved to be more effective in successfully pollinating crops. In fact, wild bee pollination nearly doubled the proportion of flowers that developed into mature fruits or seeds relative to managed honeybees.
This research suggests that agricultural intensification, including the use of pesticides, synthetic chemical inputs, large field size, low crop diversity, and loss of natural habitats surrounding farms have negative effects on wild bee populations. The implications are important for farmers around the world, according to Kennedy. Simple adjustments at the field-level, such as incorporating natural spaces on the margins of existing cropland and reducing usage of bee-toxic chemicals can help support wild bees, which in turn benefit crop yields. Simultaneously, we need to conserve and enhance natural and semi-natural habitats in our farming landscapes.
“As the world population increases to nine billion over the next few decades, we need to find ways to make more food from the same amount of land,” said Kennedy. “Any finding that can help farmers achieve this ‘sustainable intensification’ is another tool in the toolbox of feeding the world.”
Combining best practices from agriculture and environmental conservation can lead to more stable, healthier crop yields at a time when food demand is spiking.
The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people http://www.nature.org.
Source: The Nature Conservancy
TripAdvisor appoints Joel Fisher as Director of Display Advertising Sales for Asia Pacific
SINGAPORE, April 17, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — TripAdvisor™, the world’s largest travel site*, today announced the appointment of Joel Fisher, Director of Display Advertising Sales, Asia Pacific at TripAdvisor. Based in Singapore, Joel will drive the growth of the business in the Asia Pacific region, including India and Japan.
“TripAdvisor’s Display Advertising Business in Asia Pacific is seeing significant growth. I am delighted to welcome Joel, a proven leader who brings with him a wealth of experience in the industry. He will be a valuable addition in furthering our growth, delivering larger and increasingly targeted solutions for our clients,” said Cindy Tan, Vice President of Display Advertising Sales, Asia Pacific at TripAdvisor.
“I am thrilled to join TripAdvisor as it continues its expansion plans in Asia Pacific,” said Joel. “I look forward to working with new and existing clients to effectively reach TripAdvisor’s more than 200 million unique monthly visitors globally with the best targeted advertising options.”
Prior to TripAdvisor, Joel was Vice President at Travelzoo and Sojern, overseeing the Advertising Sales teams in the Eastern region for both companies. He was also previously Director of Media Sales and Airline Relations at Travelocity managing its Asia Pacific business. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Relations and Marketing Concentration from The American University.
About TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor™ is the world’s largest travel site*, enabling travelers to plan and have the perfect trip. TripAdvisor offers trusted advice from real travelers and a wide variety of travel choices and planning features with seamless links to booking tools. TripAdvisor branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, with more than 200 million unique monthly visitors**, and over 100 million reviews and opinions. The sites operate in 30 countries worldwide, including China under daodao.com. TripAdvisor also includes TripAdvisor for Business, a dedicated division that provides the tourism industry access to millions of monthly TripAdvisor visitors.
TripAdvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ: TRIP) manages and operates websites under 19 other travel media brands:www.airfarewatchdog.com, www.bookingbuddy.com, www.cruisecritic.com, www.everytrail.com,www.familyvacationcritic.com, www.flipkey.com, www.holidaylettings.co.uk, www.holidaywatchdog.com,www.independenttraveler.com, www.onetime.com, www.seatguru.com, www.sniqueaway.com,www.smartertravel.com, www.tingo.com, www.travel-library.com, www.travelpod.com, www.virtualtourist.com,www.whereivebeen.com, and www.kuxun.cn.
*Source: comScore Media Metrix for TripAdvisor Sites, worldwide, January 2013
**Source: Google Analytics, worldwide data, January 2013
©2013 TripAdvisor, Inc. All rights reserved.
Related stocks: NASDAQ-NMS:TRIP
Launch of DoctorPage 2.0: Bringing Together The Best Of Healthcare and Social Media
SINGAPORE, April 17, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — DoctorPage (http://doctorpage.sg), Singapore’s leading health portal that facilitates medical appointment bookings, has launched a new platform that redefines the way patients connect with their healthcare professionals on the web. Users can now ask their everyday, health-related questions on DoctorPage with the assurance that only certified medical practitioners and allied healthcare professionals in Singapore are able to post answers to those queries. This form of community moderation creates a safe and trusted environment for users, making DoctorPage the most reliable online source for healthcare knowledge. Besides engaging with their doctors, users are also able to join in on-going conversations within the community by commenting on other users’ questions.
For the 1,500 DoctorPage panel physicians, they are given the opportunity to engage directly with users on the platform in several ways, including providing answers to specialty-specific, health-related questions and endorsing other physicians’ treatment recommendations. With the increase in Internet penetration and prevalence of well-informed healthcare consumers in Asia, this form of social engagement is expected to improve patient acquisition and retention. In the long run, on-going dialogues between doctors and patients will also bring about better adherence to treatment plans and optimise overall clinical outcomes.
This innovative platform is a consequence of extensive behavioral analysis of over 300,000 users curated across DoctorPage’s web portal and marketing platforms, which include social media channels such as Facebook and the web blog. Insights from the analysis reveal an underserved demand for reliable, asian-centric healthcare information online thus leading to the birth of DoctorPage 2.0 – an achievement the DoctorPage team believes will do much good to the overall healthcare scene in the region.
“Improvements in healthcare access start with improvements in health literacy. We see DoctorPage 2.0 as a first step towards achieving our vision of bringing reliable medical information and better quality care to the 500 million residents in South East Asia,” said Dr. Dawn Soo, CIO at DoctorPage.
About DoctorPage
DoctorPage was founded in June 2012 in Singapore by Max-F. Scheichenost, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Dr Dawn Soo, Co-Founder and Chief Information Officer (CIO), and Daniel Endres, Chief Operating Officer (COO). It aims to improve healthcare access across Asia by providing a user-friendly platform that enables patients to search and book appointments with their preferred healthcare providers in a few simple clicks. A complementary customer relationship management system (CRM) is provided to the healthcare professionals to help optimize patient flow and clinic efficiency. DoctorPage recently released a new version of its iOS and iPad app which is available for download on iTunes. A free healthcare concierge service was launched in March to facilitate over-the-phone appointment booking, bringing greater convenience to its users. DoctorPage 2.0 provides users with a safe and trusted go-to portal to acquire health-related knowledge.
Mr Scheichenost was the co-founder of DailyDeal (acquired by Google Inc. in September 2011), and Founder and Managing Partner of Alps Ventures, an Austrian-based investment company.
Dr Soo is a medical physician by training with clinical experience in both the public and private healthcare sectors in Singapore. In addition she holds an MBA from top-tier business school, INSEAD.
Mr Endres was the Entrepreneur in Residence at DailyDeal and Operations Manager at home24 in Berlin.
For further information, please contact:
Diana Yu
Phone: (65) 3157 8905
E-mail: press@doctorpage.sg
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