In an effort to determine research spending trends, I conducted a telephone survey of the spending habits of companies that do research, develop new products, and improve food safety. I spoke with representatives of about 50 companies selected from a list of the top 150 food companies.
While it is perfectly possible to torture the resulting data into some kind of trend line, I recognized that it would be inaccurate to do so. The spending ranged from a negative single-digit percentage to an increa…