Last week, China's Yili brand of milk was making headlines for its bold moves to place its products in American entertainment, including the hit TV show The Big Bang Theory. Yili made its western product placement debut last year — alongside other Chinese brands — in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. After that plumb role, Yili claims its sales rose at least 20 percent.

What a difference a week makes. The latest headlines for the Yili brand include the terms "unusual amount"  and "mercury." It's a scandal that leaves China's milk industry teetering precariously at the point of no return. Or at least, at the point of no return for a generation.Continue reading...

News Corp. executive accepts Rebekah Brooks resignation from News International as Rupert Murdoch is defiant as U.S. congressman calls for probe into his company over possible hacking of 9/11 victims.

Amazon tablet is coming in October.

Borders’ fate hangs in the balance as liquidation looms.

BP oil found to still be washing ashore in the Gulf of Mexico, reports Bloomberg.

Campbell addresses criticism for adding salt to 'healthy' soup line.

Clorox draws bid from Carl Icahn.Continue reading...

Earlier we flagged how the Center for Science in the Public Interest co-opted Coca-Cola's distinctive branding in order to promote its lobbying efforts to ban the brown food coloring used in soda drink brands such as Coke, Diet Coke and Pepsi.

That prompted an eagle-eyed BC reader to tip us about designer Jeremy Scott's Coca-Cola-inspired garb, which hit the runway this New York Fashion Week.

In addition to modifying Coca-Cola's script to read "Enjoy God," he also lampooned Superman's logo (replacing the 'S' with a question mark) and tweaked America's milk marketing campaign with "Milk Kills" instead of "Got Milk?"Continue reading...

They’ve gotten away with calling their products “milks” for decades, but the makers of soy milk, rice milk and other plant-based dairy-beverage substitutes may no longer be permitted to, well, milk their lactose-related terms of en-dairy-ment.

The dairy industry wants the milk moniker all to itself. Only milk is milk, the dairy interests say – and everything else is just, well, vegetable juice.

The National Milk Producers Federation has written to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration asking that the term “milk” be reserved for cow’s milk, although it would also permit the word to describe goat, sheep or other “mammalian lacteal secretions.”

The group wants the FDA to require that plant-based beverages be labeled something else, such as “drinks,” “beverages” or (spit take!) “imitation milk.” That's cold.Continue reading...