ISSAQUAH, Wash. (AP) — Costco’s August sales at stores open at least a year climbed 7 percent, which was much better than industry watchers had expected.

Comparable-store sales are a key gauge of a retailer’s health because it excludes the volatility from stores that have been recently opened or closed.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had been looking for an increase of only 4.8 percent.

Domestic sales led the way, rising 7 percent, compared with 6 percent internationally.

And if the impact of lower gas prices and foreign currency fluctuations are stripped away, global sales at stores open at least a year climbed 8 percent. By that measure, sales rose 8 percent overseas and 7 percent in the U.S.

Revenue for the four weeks ended Aug. 31 increased 10 percent to $8.8 billion.

For the fourth quarter, Costco Wholesale Corp. said that sales at stores open at least a year rose 6 percent. The U.S. and overseas both posted 6 percent gains.

Excluding the impact of lower gas prices and foreign currency fluctuations, sales at stores open at least a year climbed 7 percent. In the U.S. the figure rose 6 percent. It increased 8 percent abroad.

Fourth-quarter total revenue climbed 9 percent to $34.8 billion.

Full-year sales at stores open at least a year increased 4 percent. The U.S. reported a 5 percent rise. Internationally, the figure rose 3 percent.

Taking out the impact of lower gas prices and foreign currency fluctuations, sales at stores open at least a year climbed 6 percent. In the U.S. the metric rose 5 percent. Internationally, the figure increased 7 percent.

Total revenue for the year climbed 7 percent to $110.2 billion.

Costco, based in Issaquah, Washington, ended fiscal 2014 with 663 locations, including 468 in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, 88 in Canada, 33 in Mexico, 26 in the U.K., 20 in Japan, 11 in Korea, 10 in Taiwan, six in Australia and one in Spain. It plans to open up to an additional nine new warehouse stores before the calendar year ends.

TOKYO (AP) — The multi-nation fisheries body that monitors most of the Pacific Ocean has recommended a substantial cut to the catch of juvenile bluefin tuna, a move conservationists say is only an initial step toward saving the dwindling species.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission announced the decision Thursday after meeting in Fukuoka, a city in western Japan. It said the catch should be cut to half of its average level in 2002-2004.

The commission, a grouping of more than 20 nations that monitors the western two-thirds of the Pacific, also endorsed catch limits for adult bluefin and set a 10-year target of rebuilding the population to 8 percent of its original size.

Japanese eat 80 percent of the world’s bluefin tuna, or “hon maguro,” a sushi mainstay, and demand elsewhere in the world has kept growing. At a ritual new year auction, the top price for the fish jumped to about $7,000 a kilogram in 2013 but was a more reasonable $300 per kilogram this year.

The Pew Charitable Trusts, which is trying to save the species, said the plan to cut catches is only a first step toward saving the bluefin tuna, which has been decimated by overfishing.

“There must be a strong recovery and rebuilding plan put in place for Pacific bluefin across its full range,” said Amanda Nickson, director of global tuna conservation for Pew.

“Countries have the responsibility to agree on a strong recovery plan that does more than simply move the population from severely depleted to slightly less seriously depleted,” she said.

The fisheries commission left a decision on longer-term efforts for later. It also approved a recommendation that stocks of albacore tuna do not drop more than 20 percent from their current level. Stocks of swordfish were judged to be healthy, it said.

Nations that manage the eastern Pacific bluefin fisheries are due to discuss their management plans for the species next month, and a final decision on the catch limits for the western Pacific is expected in December.

A stock assessment by the International Scientific Committee for Tuna and Tuna-like Species in the Northern Pacific Ocean found the levels of bluefin in 2012 at near their lowest ever of just 4 percent of original stocks.

Most of the fish caught are juveniles that have not had a chance to reproduce, the scientific body said.

Cutting the catch in half would reduce Japan’s annual catch of juvenile bluefins to about 4,000 tons from next year, out of a fisheries-wide catch of 4,725 tons.

The catch of adult fish weighing over 30 kilograms would be 4,882 tons out of a total regional catch of 6,591 tons, according to an announcement posted on the Japanese fisheries ministry’s website.

Fisheries experts in Japan are rushing to devise techniques for commercially viable aquaculture of the deep-sea species.

There have been other recent measures to help bluefins, which sometimes grow to the size of small cars.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last month issued stricter quotas for bycatches, or unintentional catches, of Atlantic bluefin tunas on surface longlines meant to catch other species.

Earlier this year, the EU proposed banning all use of driftnets in its waters and on its vessels by the year’s end to better enforce the protection of dolphins, sharks, swordfish and bluefin tuna. Such nets, which stretch for miles close to the surface, tend to have huge bycatches, and often were used illegally to catch bluefin tuna.

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You can follow Elaine Kurtenbach on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ekurtenbach

The moms are taking the gun control fight to Kroger’s backyard.

On Thursday, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a gun control group backed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s considerable financial resources, will blanket half…

By guest blogger Erin Scott, author of Yummy Supper and food blogger

When I was 6 years old, we hit the road for a weekend of camping in the Pacific Northwest near our home in Seattle. Along the way, we passed a fisherman’s crab shack on the side of the road. Before long, our appetites got the better of us and we turned around, abandoning our plans in exchange for a crab feast. Good food was always a priority in my family and has long been a great source of happiness in my life. My parents were passionate home cooks and invited me to cook by their sides at an early age. You could say we were food obsessed, always talking about the next meal and willing to go to any length for a great bite.

Food was about pleasure, of course, but my parents also prioritized health and nourishment. Dad was an environmentalist and a big supporter of farmers’ rights. Mom cultivated an acre of land in Northern California and filled it with organic fruit and veggies; she was a natural heath advocate long before locavorism became a household word. Food, health, and pleasure — these three things feel braided into my DNA.

So when I was diagnosed with celiac disease six years ago, I felt devastated, confused, and isolated. What did this mean? How could I find joy in eating with a serious dietary restriction? What could I cook? Would I be a pariah in Berkeley, my omnivorous food-loving town?

I was never a picky eater. Even as a small child, I ate everything with relish. (OK, maybe I didn’t love eggplant, but really, anything else was fair game.) It was hard to wrap my mind around the notion that food — this great pleasure in my life — could simultaneously be a source of illness. Yes, my belly had been aching for more than a decade, and I’d struggled to find the cause. But being told by my doctors that I could never again have even a crumb of gluten was a shock. I felt as though a great source of happiness was being ripped from me, that eating would be reduced to a simple means of delivering nutrients, devoid of real pleasure.

I spent nearly a year struggling to find my way in this new GF reality. I went to the supermarket and bought everything I could that said “gluten-free” on the label. I was afraid to go to a friend’s house for diner. Traveling felt impossibly risky. It was a lonely time, and I longed for the joy and deliciousness I’d always found in the kitchen.

One day my husband, Paul, astutely suggested we tear out our back lawn and replace it with edibles — that we fill our backyard with herbs, vegetables, and fruit trees. We coaxed our kiddos to help haul compost, and the four of us planted little seedlings: artichokes, lemon verbena, parsley, carrots, sorrel, kale, blueberries, rhubarb, tiny woodland strawberries, and countless other delights.

As the veggie patch bloomed, so did my passion for cooking. I stopped reaching for “gluten-free” packaged food and returned to cooking from scratch, looking at nature’s incredible array of vibrant ingredients as the foundation for our meals.

I may not be able to eat wheat, rye, or barley, but that leaves thousands of tasty ingredients to cook with — from pistachios to millet, baby artichokes to lamb chops, olives to eggs, cannellinis to crab, Greek yogurt to nectarines. With this expansive view, joy came whooshing back into our kitchen, and you could taste it at our table.

Any notion of deprivation faded when we stopped worrying about what we can’t eat and truly embraced all we can. The result: mouth-watering creations like Fish Tacos with Pomegranate Salsa, Bourbon-Braised Short Ribs, Red Rice Risotto with Wild Mushrooms, Frittata Packed with Greens, Lilah’s Little Apple Galettes, and ice cream sundaes with Crème Fraîche Caramel Sauce….

Inspired, I eventually wrote a cookbook that, like my blog, is inspired by flavor, bounty, joy, and a deep love of food. Its pages are packed with simple, seasonal recipes that just happen to be gluten-free. We’ve been cooking up a storm around here, and I cannot wait to share all of the deliciousness: from tasty cocktails to eggy delights, ample whole grains, treats from the sea, succulent meats, tons of fruits and veggies, and plenty of baked buttery goodness.

I like to serve dishes like these to our family and friends with an omnivore’s grin, knowing that everyone — gluten-free or not — can enjoy supper to the fullest.

Erin Scott writes and photographs the award-winning blog Yummy Supper, and her work has been featured in Kinfolk, Saveur’s Sites We Love, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, Design Sponge, the Huffington Post and Food52. Erin lives in Berkeley, CA, with her family, where she’s happiest cooking, eating, and photographing anything that sprouts in their backyard veggie patch. Visit her at yummysupper.com.

 

 

For more from Maria Rodale, visit www.mariasfarmcountrykitchen.com

A toast to ingenuity!

Watch this Foodbeast video, titled “10 Unconventional Ways To Open A Wine Bottle,” and learn how to adapt without a corkscrew. Or you can purposely lose the corkscrew, and impress your friends with your knowledge.

Some of the m…

By Rachael Rettner, Senior Writer
Published: 09/03/2014 09:48 AM EDT on LiveScience

A girl in Canada experienced an unusual allergic reaction to blueberry pie — she was not allergic to any of the pie’s ingredients, but instead reacted to antibiotic residue in the food, a new study suggests.

Shortly after eating a slice of blueberry pie, the girl experienced facial flushing, hives and abnormal breathing. She was taken to an emergency room, and treated with drugs used for allergic reactions, including epinephrine, and recovered.

A team of doctors then investigated what might have caused the girl’s reaction. Although the patient was allergic to milk, an analysis showed the pie did not contain milk. Doctors also performed tests to see if the girl was allergic to other ingredients in the pie, such as blueberries, eggs or nuts, but the tests all came back negative. [8 Strange Signs You’re Having an Allergic Reaction]

Further analysis showed that the pie contained residue from an antibiotic. The doctors tested the girl for an allergy to streptomycin, an antibiotic used as a pesticide on fruit. And, indeed, she reacted to streptomycin in much the same way as she had responded to the blueberry pie.

Although the researchers did not have access to enough of the pie to confirm that it contained streptomycin specifically, the study results suggests that the girl’s allergic reaction was caused by streptomycin-contaminated blueberries, the researchers said.

Allergic reactions to antibiotics in food — such as beef and milk — are rare, but have been reported. The new study is the first to link an allergic reaction to antibiotics in fruit, the researchers said.

The findings serve as a reminder to doctors in cases of unexplained allergic reaction. “Don’t forget to think about antibiotics,” said study researcher Dr. Anne Des Roches, an allergist at CHU Sainte-Justine, a health center affiliated with the University of Montreal in Quebec.

Allergic reaction to antibiotics in food are underdiagnosed because doctors cannot simply check a product label for antibiotics; they have to send the sample to special laboratories to perform an analysis, Des Roches said.

“This is a very rare allergic reaction” Dr. James Sublett, president-elect of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, said in a statement. “Nevertheless, it’s something allergists need to be aware of and that emergency room personnel may need to know about.”

Use of antibiotics in agriculture has received criticism because it may contribute to the rise of antibiotic resistance. Some countries have banned the use of antibiotics for growing food, but the practice is allowed in the United States and Canada.

Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took steps to help phase out the use of certain antibiotics in livestock; the drugs had been used to help animals gain weight faster.

Stricter policies to reduce antibiotic contaminants in foods will not only help to fight antibiotic resistance, but may also reduce the type of rare allergic reaction that the girl in the study experienced, the researchers said.

The study is published in the September issue of the journal Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.

Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

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