Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A LAW insisting that at least half of crew members or sharesmen on Norwegian-owned vessels fishing within the 200 mile Norwegian Economic Exclusive Zone of the North Sea be Norway nationals or residents is being challenged by the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) Surveillance Authority.…

KEITH NUTHALL
TRADERS in fish flour cannot under European Union (EU) law deliver consignments containing mammal bone fragments, even if the contamination is slight and accidental, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled. Public authorities have the right to destroy such consignments, if discovered by health inspectors, judges added.…

KEITH NUTHALL
LISTERIA monocytogenes contaminants have been found in Spanish sea bass and German smoked salmon, according to a recent bulletin from the European Commission’s rapid alert service on food safety. The system also publicises alerts on fish imported into the European Union, recently highlighting aerobic mesophiles in Indonesian shrimp, for instance.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE OFFICE International des Épizooties (OIE), the world animal health organisation, has reported an outbreak of the potentially disastrous white spot disease on an American shrimp farm in the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i (SPELLING CORRECT). Already, said the OIE, there have been 6.8 million cases in this outbreak, involving 5.6 million deaths and 1.2 million shrimps being destroyed, with 16 million being susceptible.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE DANISH government has alerted the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers to the discovery of dioxin contamination in Baltic salmon that exceeds EU safety standards, sparking alerts in former communist countries which have just become member states. The problem has led Denmark to impose its own fishing and marketing ban on Baltic salmon.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE JURY is still out over whether the fish feed additive Ecotone is environmentally damaging because of its associated release through excretion of astaxanthin, despite a study by the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA). Its scientific panel on additives and products or substances used in animal feed concluded it could not assess the impact of the additive, whose main ingredient is Phaffia rhodozyma yeast, a natural source of astaxanthin.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE USA government has listed the beluga sturgeon as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. This decision brings US requirements in line the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and could lead to restrictions or even a ban on imports of its caviar, a real threat given the US imports 80 per cent of world production.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DESPITE the woeful record of the British food industry regarding health, Britain’s food consumers are the most trusting in Europe, a new survey has suggested. Comparing UK attitudes to those in Denmark, Norway, Germany, Italy and Portugal, when asked if they felt 12 food products were “very safe” to eat, British consumers were the most optimistic in every case.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DESPITE the flawed health record of the British meat industry, Britain’s food consumers are the most trusting in Europe, a new survey has suggested. Comparing the UK with Denmark, Norway, Germany, Italy and Portugal, British consumers were most likely to consider 12 foodstuffs “very safe”.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
SENATORS from New Jersey have requested a federal investigation into whether mad cow disease caused the deaths of 13 people since the late 1980s. Senators Frank R. Lautenberg and Jon Corzine, both Democrats, have asked the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to probe the deaths, officially certified as caused by naturally occurring Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from 1988 to 1992.…