Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DUTY-FREE shop sales of confectionary rose last year by 6.5 per cent, despite some catastrophic hits being taken by a world travel industry still reeling from September 11. “Confectionery has been one of the fastest-growing categories in travel retail in recent years,” said a paper by market analysts the Moodie Report.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE FIRST meeting of the world’s five largest sugar exporters has agreed to co-ordinate efforts to boost prices in the commodity’s international market from current record lows. Meeting in Bangkok, representatives of Thailand, Australia, Brazil, South Africa and Guatemala agreed to speed up co-operation and seek to lift world prices without raising domestic retail prices.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal
MICRO-BREWERIES in Quebec, Canada, are to launch an advertising campaign to inform consumers of alleged unfair practices big beer companies use to make their products less accessible to the public, after they lost a legal complaint over the issue.…

BY MARK ROWE
THAILAND’S wine industry, which could charitably be described as embryonic, has been given a significant boost after the country’s government announced it would start issuing quality assurance kite marks for producers.

The move is designed to help the best of Thailand’s wine makers compete in the international market by enabling them to promote their wines using kite marks which can be recognised and understood by international consumers and wholesalers.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
CRUCIAL negotiations to reform the EU’s common agricultural policy will resume next Wednesday after France effectively vetoed a compromise deal on Thursday night following nearly a week of talks. Britain and five other Member States had approved the deal which involved a scaling down of original European Commission plans to “decouple” payments to farmers from production.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Commission-funded research project has claimed that further reforms are required to the EU’s live exports legislation, concluding that stressful transport conditions are not only posing problems to animal welfare but also to meat quality and consumer perceptions of the industry.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States has launched a disputes case at the World Trade Organisation against Mexico, complaining about its southern neighbour’s antidumping duties on American beef exports. Washington is claiming that Mexico broke WTO rules in framing these duties, notably its choice of data used in dumping investigations and its methods of measuring alleged injuries suffered by Mexican beef producers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AMERICAN pork exports are thriving according to a new report from the United States Trade Representative (USTR) office. Overseas sales of swine, pork and pork products have increased three times in volume and 2.5 times in value since 1993, with the US now exporting more than 700 tonnes of pork worldwide worth over US$1.5 billion.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SOMALI Livestock Board has been established in Somalia, inspecting and certifying quality meat exports from a country with no effective national government since 1991. The move was welcomed by the United Nations Development Programme and its Food and Agricultural Organisation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FEARS that avian flu may have spread from the Netherlands to poultry in Germany have sparked movement controls on live poultry, hatching eggs and fresh, unprocessed and non-heat-treated poultry manure or litter. They cannot be moved within the Lander of North Rhine-Westphalia because of an unconfirmed outbreak amongst chickens in Schwalmtal, near the Dutch border.…