Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission and the European Food Safety Authority has launched a database containing the latest information about the risks posed by acrylamide in food, which has been highlighted as being possibly dangerous in baked and fried foods.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE CITIZENS of eastern and southern European countries seeking to join the European Union (EU) consider improvements to the safety of the food they eat to be the top priority of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. Of those polled by the Eurobarometer organisation, 88 per cent cited food safety as their top priority for the CAP, rather than improving the income of their local farmers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FRENCH government is to operate a special aid fund that is designed to promote projects that reduce transport emissions and hence help the country meet its Kyoto Protocol commitments. The Environment and Energy Management Agency will grant aid totalling more than Euro 20 million annually until the end of 2007.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EU Council of Ministers has approved in principle tightening the EU packaging and packaging waste directive. Member States agreed by 2008, they should recycle 55 to 80% of packaging waste and recover at least 60%. Regarding specific materials, they agreed minimum targets of 60% for glass, 60% paper and board, 50% metals, 22.5% plastics and 15% wood.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH the World Trade Organisation in the midst of key negotiations to update its agriculture agreement, Geneva diplomats are often stressing the raison d’etre of the WTO Doha Development Round, namely that commerce helps the poor.

The idea is that by ripping down bureaucratic hurdles, duties and restrictive quotas for goods that developing countries produce in abundance – such as food – the WTO will provide their entrepreneurs with an opportunity to seize export earnings.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A MOVE by European Union (EU) health and consumer affairs Commissioner David Byrne to kick-start preparations to lift the five year de-facto moratorium on genetically modified organism imports into the EU has been blocked by Germany, France, Greece, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has banned the movement of live poultry and hatching eggs from the Netherlands to other European Union countries, following an outbreak of the highly contagious avian influenza amongst chickens in the eastern province of Gelderland.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ANOTHER Briton has been appointed head of a key EU environmental health organisation. This time, Professor Jacqueline McGlade, an environmental scientist, will become the next Executive Director of the European Environment Agency. Prof. McGlade, 47, is currently Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Professorial Fellow in Environmental Informatics and Mathematics at University College, London.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A LEGALLY binding convention has been drawn up by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) that insists on compensation being paid out for industrial accidents damaging rivers, lakes and seas that span national boundaries. The legal instrument – which should be formally approved in May – gives victims of such accidents, (such as fishermen or water companies), the right to make compensation claims, even then the polluter is in another country.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union-funded Euro 2.2 million database is being developed in Macedonia to identify and track beef, pork, veal, lamb and goat livestock, monitoring their health status and preventing sick beasts being exported into the European Union (EU).…