Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN sugar industry has promised to abide by high ethical standards in future, including its dealings with developing countries. CEFS (Comité Européen des Fatricants de Sucre) and EFFAT (European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions) have signed a joint code of conduct on corporate social responsibility.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
CANADA’S federal natural resources minister Herb Dhaliwal is lobbying his cabinet colleagues to lift a 25-year ban on offshore oil drilling in British Columbia. The Queen Charlotte Basin is estimated to hold 9.8 billion barrels of oil and 25.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FORMER enemies – Greece and Turkey – have agreed to build a Euro 250 million, 285 kilometre, gas pipeline between Komotini in Greek Thrace, with Karacabey, in Turkey, near Istanbul. The European Commission views the initiative as a key link carrying central Asian natural gas into the European Union.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
SEVERE cold weather conditions in Canada’s Ontario province have damaged vines and will starkly reduce 2003 production in the region’s CDN $400 million-per-year wine industry. Prolonged temperatures of between minus 20 and minus 23 have especially harmed merlot, sauvignon blanc, pinot blanc and cabernet sauvignon varieties.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AUSTRALIAN wine imports treated with sawdust and oak chips to maximise their oaky flavours are likely to be admitted to the European Union (EU) permanently, even though the practice is currently banned for EU wine makers.

Negotiations between the European Commission and the Australian government on allowable wine making practices are – said a Brussels memorandum – subject to “smooth progress.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TOUGH restrictions may be imposed on the use of nitrates as a preservative for meat, even where such regulations are challenged by the European Commission as breaking EU freedom of trade legislation. The European Court of Justice has backed the Danish government’s appeal against Brussels’ move to block its national rules on nitrate preservatives, which were imposed because they can cause cancer.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union has launched disputes proceedings at the World Trade Organisation, claiming that Australian quarantine proceedings for food import, especially meat, break WTO free trade rules. Brussels is particularly concerned about the “extremely long and complex risk assessment procedures” imposed on exports to Australia.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE PORTUGUESE government is planning a mass slaughter of chickens, turkeys and quails after an inquiry determines the extent to which poultry in Portugal has been treated with banned nitrofurans, a carcinogenic anti-biotic. A number of poultry farms have already been closed down following the discovery last October that the drug had been used on Portuguese birds.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FIGURES presented to European Union ministers by EU health Commissioner David Byrne suggest that BSE infection is continuing to decline across Europe. Although the total number of cases detected in tests remained roughly constant in 2002 compared with 2001, there were 10 per cent more tests carried out last year, (around 10 million), than the previous year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation has published a series of papers illustrating the gains and benefits of developing genetically modified foodstuffs, including meat. It includes notes on unusual spin-off products, such as silk secretions from sheep udders, plus information on increasing meat yields, genetic markets and potential animal health threats.…