'Your papers, please' must never be heard in America
The cost of the milk, butter fat and sugar that are key to Jim Capannari's ice cream have spiked this year, but he hasn't passed much of the cost along to customers.
The factors behind the price increases for ice cream's base ingredients are much the same as those for food in general — global demand, a weak dollar that makes American products more affordable overseas and the high cost of the mostly corn feed that most dairy cattle eat, said Penn State University economist Jim Dunn, an expert on the dairy business.
In this case, he said, economic growth has turned the Chinese into major consumers of dairy products, but they don't trust their own country's powdered milk after tainted milk killed a number of babies and sickened thousands more.
