Archive

BY PHILIP FINE

THE US government has announced increased funding to help its state food laboratories deal with possible terrorist attacks directly or indirectly involving food poisoning. By expanded their capacities, Washington hopes to increase its effectiveness and efficiency in testing meat and other food specimens to help public health officials deal with potential incidents of biological or chemical terrorism.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE US government has announced increased funding to help its state food laboratories deal with possible terrorist attacks directly or indirectly involving food poisoning. The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control are expanding the National Laboratory Response Network and the Food Emergency Response Network.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE US government has signed a bilateral textile pact with Vietnam that gives the south-east Asian country the most generous access to the American market ever granted in an initial two-country agreement, according to a critical American Textile Manufacturers’ Institute (ATMI).…

BY ALAN OSBORN
EUROPEAN tobacco farmers have a launched a pre-emptive strike against the European Commission to preserve the present system of subsidies and marketing in the face of growing pressure from health groups and others to end the regime.

Brussels has been charged by the EU Council of Ministers with drawing up a report on tobacco-growing in the EU this year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A new scheme to computerise the system under which tobacco and other excise goods is moved between traders in the EU in bond under duty-suspension arrangements will end tax evasion which the European Commission says can’t be controlled under the present “cumbersome” paper-based system.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
GERMANY has been preventing a collective acceptance by the 15 EU countries on the United Nations Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. As in the negotiations at the World Health Organisation over the convention, at EU Council of Ministers meetings Germany has stood out, (mirroring the US position), against key aspects of the text, notably the ban on tobacco advertising.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NEUROTICS and introverts often find it harder to quit smoking than extroverted happy people, according to research from the University of Warwick, England. It suggests that improving the social skills of these smokers may be more effective as an anti-smoking aid than a nicotine patch.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GOLDEN shares retained by the Spanish government in its privatised national tobacco giant Tabacalera are illegal under European Union freedom of movement of capital laws, the European Court of Justice has ruled. Spanish legislation allows Madrid control over some major decisions relating to the winding-up, de-merger, merger, disposal of assets and others of some privatised companies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INVESTIGATIONS coordinated by EU anti-fraud agency OLAF led to arrests of seven smugglers for illicitly shipping tobacco from the Baltic States to the Netherlands, where 10.35 million black-market cigarettes were seized. Three Latvian smugglers were also arrested – in Germany – and 4 million smuggled cigarettes were found in Belgium, near 35 tonnes of illicit hand-rolling tobacco.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Commission officials have codified and simplified the complicated legislation controlling the European Union common market organisation for raw tobacco. Their new composite EU regulation is being submitted to the Council of Ministers for approval. Its aim is to make following its terms simpler and easier to understand for tobacco industry managers and regulators.…