Consumers' view on pork: Consumption motives and production preferences in ten European Union and four non-European Union countries.

To analyse consumers' attitudes and perceptions towards pork, online surveys were performed with 11,294 consumers from ten European Union (EU) and four non-EU countries. The survey indicates that, although animal welfare affects consumers' view on pork, it is not consumers' primary concern. For most countries, the ranking order of food motives was health and natural, sensory quality, price, and animal welfare.

Impact of test sensitivity and specificity on pig producer incentives to control Mycobacterium avium infections in finishing pigs.

In this paper we analyze the impact of the sensitivity and specificity of a Mycobacterium avium (Ma) test on pig producer incentives to control Ma in finishing pigs. A possible Ma control system which includes a serodiagnostic test and a penalty on finishing pigs in herds detected with Ma infection was modelled. Using a dynamic optimization model and a grid search of deliveries of herds from pig producers to slaughterhouse, optimal control measures for pig producers and optimal penalty values for deliveries with increased Ma risk were identified for different sensitivity and specificity values.

Usefulness of food chain information provided by Dutch finishing pig producers to control antibiotic residues in pork.

The EU prescribes that food business operators must use food chain information to assist in food safety control. This study analyses usefulness of food chain information about antibiotic usage covering the 60-day period prior to delivery of pigs to slaughter in the control of antibiotic residues in pork. A dataset with 479 test results for antibiotic residues in tissue samples of finishing pigs delivered to a Dutch slaughter company was linked to information provided by pig producers about antibiotic usage in these finishing pigs.

An L form of Bernstein's inequality.

Suppose P is a pth degree real polynomial function in n variables and f=PS(n-1) is the restriction of P to the unit sphere S(n-1) in R(n). Bernstein's inequality asserts that ([unk](0) (k)f)(2) + p(2)([unk](0) (k-1)f)(2) /= 1 and differentiation is with respect to arc length theta along any geodesic in S(n-1). We find the constant corresponding to p(2k) when parallelf parallelinfinity is replaced by parallelf parallel(2).

Gross thermodynamics of heat engines in deep interior of Earth.

From the gross conservation laws of thermodynamics in a convecting material we derive a bound on the ratio of the rate of production of mechanical or magnetic energy to the rate of internal radioactive heating which drives the convection. Our bound for this "efficiency" depends on the temperatures in the material, and can exceed unity. Whether the bound can be attained by "efficiencies" in real fluids is not known, but a simple machine shows that "efficiencies" larger than unity are physically realizable.