Gerlof Toenhake, the Marketing Director of Ball Packaging Europe, gave an interesting talk at Anuga 2012 on why more packaging, especially cans, could be good for the environment. [ + ]

DuPont claims to have created starter cultures that may help quark and fresh cheese manufacturers increase their output by up to 4% by allowing businesses to extract more curd from the milk than other cultures. [ + ]

Anuga Food Tec is held every three years in Cologne and anyone who’s anyone in the food and beverage processing and packaging industry either exhibits or at least attends. [ + ]

To help kitchen appliance and food processing equipment manufacturers comply with new EC regulations for glass fibre sizing, Owens Corning has developed FoodContact, a glass fibre solution for reinforced plastic. [ + ]

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) has called for submissions on a proposal relating to minor meat species and wild game. The proposal looks at possible food safety measures for producers and processors of animals such as kangaroo, crocodile, rabbit, ostrich and emu. [ + ]

Clear food labelling is key to improving Australian health, an alliance of leading health and consumer groups has argued. [ + ]

After 25 years in Blackburn, Rockwell Automation has a new address. The company moved its South Pacific headquarters to Mountain Highway in Bayswater. [ + ]

Woolworths has opened a $31 million extension to its meat centre in Bunbury, Western Australia. [ + ]

Australian dairy farmers have voted to lift the Dairy Service Levy rate by 10%. [ + ]

Submissions must be received by close of business on Friday 11 May for the APPMA 2012 Annual Scholarship Submissions. The 2012  winner will be announced during the AIP National Conference which will be held on the 14 and 15 June at Marriott Hotel, Surfers Paradise. [ + ]

Holst Centre, imec and their partners in the EU FP7 project ORICLA have fabricated an radio frequency identification (RFID) circuit made in low-temperature, thin-film technology that allows reader-talks-first communication. The technology behind this prototype is used to create RFID tags that are cheap enough and have enough performance to be used as intelligent item-level tags on the packaging of retail consumer goods. [ + ]

The old adage ‘you are what you eat’ may have received some extra credibility after scientists proved that trans fats can make you angry. Researchers at the University of California’s San Diego School of Medicine have demonstrated a link between consumption of dietary trans fatty acids (dTFAs) and aggression. [ + ]

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) has called for submissions on an application for a bacteriophage preparation to reduce the risk of Listeria monocytogenes. [ + ]

Campbell Brothers has announced that its testing services business, the ALS Group, has acquired two UK companies: Eclipse Scientific Group and Advanced Micro Services (AMS) for around AU$39m. The acquisition is expected to be completed by 3 April 2012. [ + ]

Bavarian brewery Paulaner has announced growth rates of nearly 40% in the Asia-Pacific region for 2011, which it claims is a new export record for the year. [ + ]