Category Archives: Industry

Pros And Cons Of A Federal Auto Industry Bailout

Pro 1: Eco Cars
If the bailout money works the way it is supposed to and pulls the big three out of the hole, good things could potentially come of it. One proposal is that after being saved the automakers could be pushed to manufacture and sell cars that are both good for the environment and economy.

Con 1: Taxpayer Cash
Perhaps the most obvious con, it is no secret that we will all be helping bail these companies out. Although it is still unknown where the money may or may not come from, taxpayer cash will be included for sure. Bloggers, business leaders, and experts are expressing their frustration about this all over the Internet.

Pro 2: Recession Woes
While most are already feeling the effects of a recession on their wallets and gas tanks, it could be a lot worse if something else big happens. Some experts feel not bailing out the big three could result in a much deeper and more severe recession then we are already in. With thousands of jobs connected to the auto companies and stocks across the board, their downfall could have a large effect on our economy.

Con 2: Bankruptcy
One of the only other options for GM and the rest of the big three is to file bankruptcy under chapter 11. It is true that we have already assisted these companies financially this year and it helped them for few months. For this reason, some economists feel another bailout would just be like bailing out a sinking ship that is going to sink no matter what we do. Bankruptcy however, could be their only salvation, and many experts claim that it could be their best option. Michael Levine of the Wall Street Journal claims, the cost of terminating dealers is only a fraction of what it would cost to rebuild GM to become a company sized and marketed appropriately for its market share. Contracts would have to be bought out. The company would have to shed many of its fixed obligations. Some obligations will be impossible to cut by voluntary agreement. GM will run out of cash and out of time.

Pro 3: Prior Success
As history tends to repeat itself, I think it important to consider the Chrysler bailout of 1979. In the mid 70’s while our country was going through a gas crisis, Chrysler refused to stop making their biggest most gas guzzling luxury cars. This mistake led them to requesting a bailout in late 79. However, to the surprise of the watching country, Chrysler came out with the “K-car” that sold like hot cakes and pulled the company out of a financial crisis. Chrysler then paid off their debt to the government 7 years early, and the government made over $660 million in profit from the bailout when all was said and done. Many people claim that if given another bailout, the auto companies could pull themselves out from near bankruptcy, and the federal government could generate revenue as well.

Con 3: Private Jet-setting
Unfortunately, when the CEO’s of the big three traveled to Washington D.C. to request billions from taxpayers early this week, all three CEO’s took private jets with round trip travel costs totaling of over $40,000 per CEO. This ostentatious show of wealth was considered highly disrespectful to the taxpayers about to consider bailing them out and created tons of bad publicity for the potential bailout. If companies are going to get taxpayers money, then we need to know that they are being frugal with it.

Organic Industry Watchdog FDA Food Safety Rules Threaten to Crush the Good Food Movement

September 19, 2013 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Mark Kastel, 608-625-2042

Organic Industry Watchdog: FDA Food Safety Rules Threaten to Crush the Good Food Movement

New Report Suggests Proposed Rules Could Drive the Nation’s Safest and Best Farmers Out of Business

http://www.cornucopia.org/2013/09/fda-food-safety-rules-threaten-crush-good-food-movement/ CORNUCOPIA, WI: After years of deliberation in Congress, interagency meetings, lobbyist activity, and a never-ending stream of food poisoning outbreaks, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is finally poised to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).

However, according to a just released white paper by The Cornucopia Institute at http://www.cornucopia.org/FoodSafety/, the FDA’s draft rules are so off the mark that they might economically crush the country’s safest farmers while ignoring the root threats to human health: manure contaminated with deadly infectious pathogens generated on “factory” livestock farms and high-risk produce-processing practices.

-In response to deadly outbreaks involving spinach, peanut butter and eggs, Congress acted decisively three years ago to pass the Food Safety Modernization Act,” said Mark A. Kastel, Codirector at The Cornucopia Institute, a farm policy research group based in Wisconsin. “Better oversight is needed but it looks like regulators and corporate agribusiness lobbyists are simultaneously using the FSMA to crush competition from the organic and local farming movement.”

Cornucopia’s report closely examines the FDA’s draft regulations (http://www.fda.gov/Food/guidanceregulation/FSMA/ucm334114.htm) for implementing the new food safety law, and a new FDA guidance (http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/Eggs/ucm360028) designed to control Salmonella in eggs produced by outdoor flocks. The report concludes that the new proposals would ensnare some of the country’s safest family farmers in costly and burdensome regulations in a misdirected attempt to rein in abuses that are mostly emanating from industrial-scale farms and giant agribusiness food-processing facilities.

Family farm advocates, and groups representing consumers interested in high-quality food, thought they had won a victory when the Tester/Hagan amendment was adopted by Congress exempting farmers doing less than $500,000 in business from the new rules. But Cornucopia’s report suggests the FDA seems more interested in a “one-size-fits-all” approach to food safety regulation.

In reality, the report suggests that small farms are not really exempt. The FDA is proposing that the agency can, without any due process, almost immediately force small farms to comply with the same expensive testing and record-keeping requirements as factory farms.

“In practical terms,” explains Judith McGeary, a member of The Cornucopia Institute’s policy advisory panel and Executive Director of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, “the FDA will be able to target small farms one-by-one and put them out of business, with little to no recourse for the farmers.”

The FDA’s economic analysis also shows that farms over $500,000 (still small in the produce industry) will be significantly impacted with some being driven out of business.

“The added expense and record-keeping time will potentially force many small and medium-sized local farms – owner-operated, selling at farmers markets directly to consumers or to local grocers and natural food co-ops – out of business,” Kastel added.

The Institute’s analysis points out that the FDA has wildly inflated the number of foodborne illnesses that originate from farm production (seed to harvest rather than contamination that occurs later in processing and distribution).

It also alleges that the FDA has failed to recognize that specific processed crops such as fresh-cut, or produce grown in certain regions are the genesis of 90% of dangerous outbreaks in fruits and vegetables. In addition to imports from countries like Mexico, where the most recent Taylor Farms Cyclospora outbreak (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/business/taylor-farms-big-food-supplier-grapples-with-frequent-recalls.html?_r=0) originated, the evidence indicates that fresh-cut bagged/boxed salad mix and greens, other pre-cut vegetables and sprouts are much more prone to contamination.

“The proposed rule is a mess,” said Daniel Cohen, owner of Maccabee Seed Company, a longtime industry observer. “The FDA has much greater expertise on food safety issues from harvest to the consumer, but focused instead on farming issues from planting to harvest. Limited, modest, and more focused steps to improve on-farm food-safety could have produced simple, affordable, effective, and enforceable regulation.”

According to Cornucopia, the most important lost opportunity in the collaborative process between Congress, the FDA and the USDA is the lack of attention directed at the giant concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs (factory farms) raising livestock. The massive amount of manure stored at these factory farms is commonly tainted by highly infectious bacteria that have been polluting America’s air, water and farmlands.

“Federal regulators propose nothing to address sick livestock in animal factories and their pathogen-laden manure that is contaminating surrounding rural communities, nearby produce farms and our food supply,” Kastel lamented.

No More Organic Eggs?

The 2010 salmonella outbreak in eggs, centered in Iowa, shone a spotlight on industrial-scale egg houses confining thousands of hens in filthy and dangerous conditions.

The salmonella outbreak led to comprehensive regulation and new guidance for organic farmers. Organic farmers are required by federal law to provide outdoor access to their hens and the new FDA guidance, according to Cornucopia, materially undermines this management practice. And they are doing this despite scientific evidence tying higher rates of pathogenic contamination to older, massive factory farms with cages and forced molting (practices banned in organics) rather than raising birds outside.

“Their new guidance, on one hand, will make it difficult, expensive and maybe even impossible to have medium-sized flocks of birds outside,” Kastel stated. “At the same time, the FDA has colluded with the USDA’s National Organic Program to say that tiny ‘porches’, which hold only a minute fraction of the flock, will now legally constitute ‘outdoor access.’ This is a giveaway to conventional egg companies that are confining as many as 100,000 birds in a building and calling these ‘organic.'”

The Cornucopia Institute has publicly stated that they are investigating legal action against regulators if enforcement action is not taken, under the Organic Foods Production Act (http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC50603700), against the large industrial operations confining laying hens and broilers indoors.

The issue of food safety in Washington has been a contentious one, causing rifts even between nonprofits representing the interest of consumers and family farm organizations that have been historically aligned in support of organic and local food. Some consumer advocates pressed for no exemptions, even as farm policy experts have supplied evidence indicating smaller, family-operated farms are inherently safer.

“Only an idiot would not be concerned with food safety,” said Tom Willey, a Madera, California, organic vegetable producer and longtime organic advocate.

Added Willey: “The antibiotic resistant and increasingly virulent organisms contaminating produce, from time to time, are mutant creatures introduced into the larger environment from confined industrial animal operations across the American countryside. The FDA’s misguided approach could derail achievements in biological agriculture and a greater promise of food made safe through respect for and cooperation with the microbial community which owns and operates this planet upon which we are merely guests.”

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The Cornucopia Institute is a nonprofit organization engaged in research and educational activities supporting the ecological principles and economic wisdom underlying sustainable and organic agriculture. Through research and investigations on agricultural and food issues, The Cornucopia Institute provides needed information to family farmers, consumers, stakeholders involved in the good food movement, and the media.

The New Favorite Rhea Thierstein in the British Fashion Industry

You cannot make it clear what exactly Thierstein Rhea do, because we may consider her as a window designer, installation artist, graphic artist or photographer, but you perhaps surprisingly image that eye-catching identity of the lovely girl is at present the most sought-after set designer of fashion sheet in the British fashion industry.

A powerful and unconstrained style together with Tim mark

Rhea Thierstein in 2005 graduated from university, where she studied professional photographers. Originally with one thought of a photographer, she worked together with famous set designer Shona Heath during her internship. The young Thierstein Rhea was deeply touched by the creative wonderful work. After graduation, she did not leave the studio of Shona Heath during four years. Until 2010 March, Rhea Thierstein began to work independently, to create her own set design.

Soon genius creativity of unconstrained style of Thierstein Rhea was found by famous fashion photographer Tim mark found. they work together to shoot fashion blockbusters for -Costumes- and -POP- of American edition, -Vogue- -Vanity Fair- -Wallpaper- of Britain and Italy edition. Thierstein which learned photography can better understand what photographer wants to express. She has its own unique aesthetic perspective for the design of large sets, full of sweet girl feelings also do not break dangerous sexy visual impact.

“Bumblebee” lights up the world’s most famous show window This year, in addition to a series of large sets, the most notable new movement of Thierstein Rhea work is to design show window for Selfridges. To ask which show window in markets is most famous in the world. Of course, it belongs to the department store in the London Oxford Street Selfridges. This show window which has been voted the global most optimal in department stores is famous for avant-garde window display design. -Bright Young Things- design exhibition is the window design activity that this year Selfridges department store has specially screened the most red 25 Young rookie from around the world. Thierstein Rhea was listed in that activity. She also used two huge bumblebees to express this theme of “Spring&Summer”, which had become the most eye-catching window display design.

Career and Tourism Opportunities in the Sports Industry

Recent trends in public interest towards sports has catalyzed new career opportunities in the sports industry, and this trend will also predictably grow. This trend can be thought of as a sign of our times. Families, teams, and individuals are on the move with different motives: some are in for the competition; others seek interaction with like-minded travelers, while others are lured as spectators. This trend may be due to the proliferation of sport supplies in the market which has helped greatly in sports development, and it has brought about the demand for a new team of professionals that will cater solely to the needs both of sports as an industry and as a novel area of tourism.

Tourism-wise, the sports industry have opened an opportunity for hospitality practitioners that are adept with the latest trends in sports that will be of interest to travelers. While practicing their profession as hospitality managers, these professionals suddenly found it that their being abreast with the latest in sports trends have put them in a position that enables them to better interact with their sports-minded clientele.

On the other hand, as an adjunct to the professional training of athletes, the need for professional writers of sporting books have also emerged. These writers of sporting books must be highly knowledgeable in a sense that they should not only have the skills expected of a writer but they should also possess a comprehensive command of their subject, thereby ensuring that they can can serve the industry better.

The sprouts industry also opened a door for technology experts who can engineer the production of sport supplies that will meet not only the physical need of an athlete but will also consider other aspects of a particular sport in a holistic manner. For instance, ergonomic engineers are highly in demand for the design of athletic support systems that will ensure the overall functionality of sports paraphernalia before its final production. Without the expertise of these professionals, the quality of sports supplies will suffer, and as a whole, it may also affect the quality of an athlete’s experience. Such a scenario may demoralize professional athletes and will be detrimental to the sports industry. The same is also true with amateur athletes.

The industry is also being pushed to a steady rate of growth by multimedia practitioners. Before the advent of multimedia technologies, training of athletes and sports amateurs depended solely on face to face sessions with a trainer or instructor, and also on the best sports books that can be had. Thanks to technology, even a minimal session with an instructor or trainer will suffice for an athlete or a sport amateur. The presence of videos makes up for time that an instructor or trainer is not around.

How Christmas Cards Affect The Printing Industry

Each day during the Christmas season, many businesses and private individuals turn to printers, asking them for personalised calendars and corporate Christmas cards. Writing Christmas cards became a tradition in the XVIII century, when the British royal family started to use them as a form of congratulation for social acquaintances.

So, Christmas cards became the ideal way to congratulate someone during the holiday season, without having to spend a lot of money on the purchase of gifts and wrapping paper. Furthermore, Christmas cards could be sent by mail without any problem; as the XX century advanced, more and more people turned to Christmas cards as a solution to an increasing social ambiance and to lessen the need to provide tokens or gifts of friendship that overwhelms their entire financial income.

Even so, Christmas cards became a great advertising and marketing opportunity since trade cards started to appear. Trade cards are prints on one single sheet or card, with the business simply wishing the customer a Merry Christmas; but the idea of the Christmas card as we know it started to appear and become more popular in the XX century. In 1961 only 2000 of them were printed, while in 2005 an average of 1.4 million Christmas cards were printed, sent and distributed.

This makes Christmas cards one of the strongest money-makers for the printing industry, not only from the private sector, but also from the commercial sector that seeks to elevate their business higher in the ranking of the target market, in contrast to their competitors.

Frequently, printing workshops linger through the year with a small amount of work, according to the difficulties and economic events that happen in the location where they are found; it might be that all the work they do relates to marketing promotional products. Big printing companies do not worry much about the off season, since they carry on the printing requirements for other companies, however, the small printing business, the one that suffers the changes of the printing business season, suffers the consistent reduction of marketing promoting products.

The Internet, with its online marketing potential, makes it less necessary for advertisers and marketers to use promotional products to enhance the presence of a product, service or business in the target market. Consequently, printing workshops have to subsist as much as possible on alternative means, until the Christmas season. Christmas cards are still popular among private citizens and businesses; however, the appearance of the laser printer and the increasing use of the Internet has modified greatly the way Christmas cards are viewed, printed and even created.

In yester years, Christmas cards were printed on cardboard and decorated with water colours and even glitter; now, even serigraphy is taken off the Christmas cards, making laser printed Christmas cards the new fashion statement; this might end up reducing the printing workshops to a thing of the past.

Despite it all, Christmas cards are still the biggest income source for all printing workshops alongside the printing of catalogues and calendars. Therefore, the effect that Christmas cards have on the printing industry is evident to the naked eye.