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For many years it has been recognised that physical distribution is a promising area for the application of system modelling techniques. Freight transportation systems offer a rare combination of tractability and realistic opportunity for improvement. Large‐scale freight network models, for example, can be useful to state and national transportation system planners. Among other uses, the models permit examination of the impact of proposed changes on modal competition and on the flow of traffic over certain routes. Carriers may also find network models useful for their more limited planning purposes, such as determining the consequences of changes in a physical system. For example, facilities or links can be added, deleted, or modified in order to analyse the effects on tonnage and mode of shipment for the affected commodities. Specific routes can be added or eliminated in order to determine the worth of using those routes. Finally, firms can change the commodity tonnage between specific origins and destinations in order to assess future transportation needs.

Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices.

The theoretical underpinning of this research is ‘sustainability’ and the ‘supply chain processes’ in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and ‘design science’ methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains.

The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model’s unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.

A highly significant action taken by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, reported elsewhere in this issue, could well result in important advances in surveillance and probably legislative control over enforcement of certain aspects of EEC legislation in the Member‐states. The Minister has sent an urgent request to the Commission in Brussels to dispatch inspectors to each country, including the United Kingdom, to examine and report on the standards of inspection and hygiene with detailed information on how the EEC Directive on Poultry Meat is being implemented. Information of the method of financing the cost of poultrymeat inspection in each country has ben requested. The comprehensive survey is seen as a common approach in this one field. The Minister requested that the results of the inspectors' reports should be available to him and other Member‐states.

WE write on the eve of an Annual Meeting of the Library Association. We expect many interesting things from it, for although it is not the first meeting under the new constitution, it is the first in which all the sections will be actively engaged. From a membership of eight hundred in 1927 we are, in 1930, within measurable distance of a membership of three thousand; and, although we have not reached that figure by a few hundreds—and those few will be the most difficult to obtain quickly—this is a really memorable achievement. There are certain necessary results of the Association's expansion. In the former days it was possible for every member, if he desired, to attend all the meetings; today parallel meetings are necessary in order to represent all interests, and members must make a selection amongst the good things offered. Large meetings are not entirely desirable; discussion of any effective sort is impossible in them; and the speakers are usually those who always speak, and who possess more nerve than the rest of us. This does not mean that they are not worth a hearing. Nevertheless, seeing that at least 1,000 will be at Cambridge, small sectional meetings in which no one who has anything to say need be afraid of saying it, are an ideal to which we are forced by the growth of our numbers.

IN this issue we conclude our symposium on Modern Library Planning, and although it is not as complete as we could wish, it has certainly proved to be one of the most interesting subjects we have been able to deal with in recent years. We regret that lack of space has prevented us from including some interesting details about new libraries, and that we have laid ourselves open to the criticism of over‐crowding. We hope, however, that we shall be able, from time to time, to add further material as the occasion warrants. We had hoped to obtain a description of the Central Library Extension of the Hull Public Libraries, but this has, unfortunately, proved impossible. Lancashire County Library, too, is constructing four new branch libraries, an account of which we should have liked to include. Plymouth may be mentioned as still another library of which the material was not ready in time for our symposium. Also, we are sorry to have had to omit some of the illustrations which librarians have been kind enough to offer us for reproduction. In spite of these omissions, however, we have been able to gather together much that is new and interesting in modern planning, and one of the points that is well worth notice is the willingness of librarians to experiment in new ideas, even if conservatively.

AT the very outset of this paper it is necessary to make clear that it is not an attempt to compile an exhaustive bibliography of literature relating to special librarianship. Neither space nor time permit this. In fact, the references given can only claim to be a sample of the wealth of material on the subject and this paper is submitted in the hope that it will stimulate others to more scholarly efforts. Reference numbers throughout this paper refer to items in the ‘Select list of references to the literature of special librarianship’, section 2 onwards.

Over the years we have reported prosecutions where the defence has alleged, and with circumstantial support that the presence of a harmful foreign body in food was deliberate through the action of a single disgruntled employee or where the labour relations climate generally has been bad. It makes no difference to the manufacturer's responsibility—the offence is an absolute one—but occasionally courts have allowed it in mitigation. Sometimes, it has been the nature of the extraneous material, e.g. fragments of glass or metal, the like of which did not exist in the factory premises or plant. This may be taken as a symptom of the vandalism of the age, but more recently, two incidents have drawn attention to its dangers and provided a glimpse of the criminal mind which can inflict such injury on employers, and expose innocent consumers, of all ages, to possible harm.

The statement of the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, coming so quickly after the ban on the use of cyclamates in food and drink in the United States, indicates that the new evidence of carcinogenesis in animals, placed at the disposal of the authorities by the U.S. F.D.A., has been accepted; at least, until the results of investigations being carried out in this country are available. The evidence was as new to the U.S. authorities as to our own and in the light of it, they could no longer regard the substances as in the GRAS class of food additives. It is, of course, right that any substance of which there is the slightest doubt should be removed from use; not as the result of food neuroses and health scares, but only on the basis of scientific evidence, however remote the connection. It is also right that there should always be power of selection by consumers avoidance is usually possible with other things known to be harmful, such as smoking and alcohol; in other cases, especially with chemical additives to food and drink, there must be pre‐knowledge, so that those who do not wish to consume food or drink containing such additives can ascertain from labelling those commodities which contain them.

Safety precautions in the use of raw materials, in manufacturing and processing, marketing and enforcement of food and drug law on purity and quality may appear nowadays to be largely a matter of routine, with manufacturers as much involved and interested in maintaining a more or less settled equilibrium as the enforcement agencies. Occasionally the peace is shattered, eg, a search and recovery operation of canned goods of doubtful bacterial purity or containing excess metal contamination, seen very much as an isolated incident; or the recent very large enforcement enterprise in the marketing of horseflesh (and other substitutions) for beef. The nationwide sale and distribution of meat on such a vast scale, only possible by reason of marketing methods — frozen blocks of boneless meat, which even after thawing out is not easily distinguishable from the genuine even in the eye of the expert; this is in effect only a fraud always around in the long ago years built up into a massive illicit trade.

Legal process by its very nature cannot be swift; step by step, it must be steady and sure and this takes time. There is no room for hasty decisions for these would tend to defeat its purpose. Time, however, is of the essence and this is set for various aspects of legal action by limitation of actions legislation, which sets periods after which the case is no longer actionable. The periods are adequate and in civil law, generous to avoid injustice being done. The one serious complaint against the process of law, however, is the unwarrantable delays which are possible despite limitation. From the far‐off days of Equity, when Dickens' Jarndyce v Jarndyce, caricatured and exaggerated as it was, described the scene down to the present when delays, often spoken of in Court as outrageous are encountered, to say nothing of the crowded lists in the High Courts and Crown Courts; the result of the state of society and not the fault of the judiciary. Early in 1980, it was reported that 14,500 cases were awaiting trial in the Southeastern Circuit Crown Court alone. Outside the Courts legal work hangs on, to the annoyance of those concerned; from house purchase to probate. Here, the solicitor is very much his own master, unhampered by statutory time limits and the only recourse a client has is to change this solicitor, with no certainty that there will be any improvement, or appeal to the Law Society.