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The goal of this research was to try a new methodology to elicit consumers' willingness to pay for genetically modified (GM) food.

Even though experimental auctions have been used for several years, they do not provide qualitative information on consumers' reasoning behind their purchase behaviours. To provide further illumination in this regard, a thought‐listing technique and a questionnaire were added.

A majority of the consumers involved in this study were ready to pay for the GM food offered. The benefit provided by the GM product did not seem to be the major purchase criterion and sensory assessment appeared to be important. The use of different methodologies on the same sample of participants revealed that there was a gap between purchasing intentions and behaviours, and that a key to efficiently assessing public perception and purchase behaviours is the precision of the context.

The absence of discrimination between the different benefits offered, might come from the limited size of the samples or from the nature of the benefits offered. Future research should consider larger samples and more diversified products.

This study has concrete methodology applications. If one would like to conduct a market study, for instance, on a specific GM product, a general survey on biotechnology will not provide relevant answers.

The implementation of experimental auctions with psychometric tools, created an original and suitable protocol for accessing consumers' willingness to pay as well as their justifications.

The article describes a project undertaken at the National Library of Wales to compare automated systems for the storage and retrieval of historic cartographic records. The selection and purchase of software, cataloguing of a representative sample of historic cartographic materials, system customisation and data input is outlined. Following the evaluation of systems, conclusions are drawn for future automated map catalogue development.

The value which can be placed upon the rights of property in a name of a commodity, a food or drink, perhaps famous all over the world, which has come down to us through the centuries, is incalculable. Most of such foods and drinks have a regional association, and are prepared according to methods, often secret, handed down from one generation to another and from locally grown and produced materials. Nowhere are such traditions so well established as in cheese‐making and the wine industry. The names do not signify merely a method of manufacture, since this can be simulated almost anywhere, nor even the raw materials, but differences in climate, the soil and its treatment, its produce, harvesting, even in the contaminants of environment. Rochfort cheese, for example, is made from ewe's milk, but most important, with mould growths found only in the caves of that part of France where it is stored.

Every few years we have analysed trends in prosecutions under the Food and Drugs Act, 1955 and the various regulations, chiefly for the purpose of ascertaining the principal causes for which proceedings are instituted and to detect changes, if any, from one survey to the next. The period covered in each survey has been three months, but not the same months of the year, and the material, the reports of proceedings received at the offices of the Journal from all parts of the country. In the present survey the method of classification has been the same as formerly, viz., to record prosecutions under similar headings to those under which cases are reported in the Journal with those where foreign material in the food constituted the offence separately identified. As it has appeared obvious for some time now that prosecutions for mouldy food were increasing, these too have been separately recorded.

Of matters concerning man's day‐to‐day living, none receives more attention than his diet; the foods which housewives should buy, how they should be prepared and cooked. All women's journals and most daily newspapers profess to give expert advice on diet, nutritional needs, recipes, meals, etc. Radio and television have programmes on the subject and television advertisements, when not eulogising drink of all sorts, cigarettes or soap, are largely devoted to extolling proprietary foods, without the generous addition of which to the diet, one gathers, malnutrition is unavoidable.

A new Protection of Consumers (Trade Descriptions) law to replace existing legislation was before the House of Lords—it had a second reading and passed to the Committee stage but has now lapsed because of the Election —as the outcome of the Molony Committee on Consumer Protection which made its final report about three years ago. Merchandise Marks law has proved extremely valuable protection for the consumer in a wide field of misdescription and in the narrower sphere of food control a useful measure for supplementing Sect. 6, Food and Drugs Act, 1955, especially where the latter seems less suitable in application. The broad purpose of the Merchandise Marks Acts is to deal with misdescription of goods—false trade description—and as far as food is concerned, this is not always a matter of quality. On rare occasions it has been seen to work in reverse. In the curious case of Essex County Council v. Tuckwell (Butchers) Ltd., 1964, where the defendant had inadvertently supplied English instead of the New Zealand lamb ordered, generally accepted as being meat of better quality, the L.C.J. held that there was no defence against the charge of having sold meat with a false trade description.