Garlic Central News

The Weekend Australian reports on a massive garlic theft in New South Wales.

Some time last week a thief stole 110 bags of garlic from a Brierfield property. Each bag weighted approximately 20kg of garlic - so that's over two tonnes of garlic!

The value of the stolen garlic is estimated at almost $30,000.

NutraIngredients.com reports that the European Commission is taking Germany to court over its classification of garlic supplements.

Most EU countries classify garlic pills and supplements as foodstuffs. Germany classifies them as medicines resulting in extra regulations being enforced.

The European Commission claims that this is in breach of EU rules regarding the single market.

Borneo Bulletin reports on the potential value of garlic as an environmentally friendly pesticide.

A four year research project - funded by the US Department of Agriculture - has developed a garlic pesticide tablet. The cheap tablets are added to water and used to treat seeds before planting.

The result is a cheap, effective pesticide that avoids the environmental damage associated with many artificial chemical pesticides.

BusinessWire reports that V-Net Beverage Inc has ceased development of its Allimax Nutraceutical Water product.

V-Net concluded that the product lacked shelf life. They were concerned over the instability of allicin.

V-Net are now planning instead to develop a new product called Real-Time Allicin. This will contain allicin precursors - alliin and allinase - and is intended to release allicin when combined with water.

The Los Angeles Business Journal reports that local garlic growers are becoming increasingly upset by the huge quantities of imported garlic arriving in the region.

Californian farmers claim that Chinese garlic is being "dumped" on the region as a result of a loophole in trade rules. This is threatenng the local industry.

In 2004 86 million pounds of Chinese garlic was imorted into the US - exceeding for the first time the local Californian production of 81 million pounds.