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The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled late last month that FDA violated the Food Safety and Modernization Act of 2010 by failing to promulgate final regulations for FSMA by the deadlines imposed by Congress and contained in the legislation, reports The Food Institute.

The Food Institute tracked 59 mergers and acquisitions through the first quarter of 2013, of which 43 were completed and 16 were not finalized. If the current rate were to continue through the end of the year, a total of 236 mergers would be counted, a decline of more than 25% from the previous year.

After trending in line with retail food inflation since the third quarter of 2011, sales growth at the nation’s food stores exceeded that rate for the past three quarters, according to exclusive Food Institute analysis of government data. The gap between the year-over-year changes for both indices expanded to 1.8 percentage points in the first quarter of 2013 – the largest positive gap for retailers since the second quarter of 2011.

The Food Institute Report recently noted that in an extreme move to prevent showrooming of its products online, an Australian gluten-free grocery store called Celiac Supplies began charging a $5 fee for “just looking” online in February of this year.

Recent reports from the Food Institute bring to the light the increasing penetration of retailers other than traditional grocery stores looking to take an increasing share of consumer food expenditures.

If you’re a seller of food of some sort and don’t think it’s time to at least starting learning about the online grocery shopping experience, you may want to re-evaluate ,according to The Food Institute, which will explore the high value of online shoppers in an upcoming webinar.

Using wholesale food prices as an indicator of things to come on the retail side, The Food Institute projects that food-at-home price inflation will trend higher into the second quarter of this year.

The Food & Beverage Industry Study conducted late last year is a way for food & beverage companies to benchmark their results with the overall industry

It’s of little surprise that large grocery chains and big-box retailers have begun to take notice of the growing demand for local food reports The Food Institute. Consumers are more willing to pay a premium for locally-sourced food, seeing it as better-tasting, more trustworthy, and more sustainable, according to A.T. Kearney’s Buying into the Local Food Movement report.

From the Food Institute Report this week, “Grocers have far fewer online visitors as e-commerce has yet to play a significant role in food retail,” notes a recent report from CITI RESEARCH.