Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Office of Zoonoses, the world animal health institution, has reported tests confirming an outbreak of avian influenza subtype H7 in two Connecticut, USA, chicken farms, threatening the health of 2.3 million birds. State authorities are working with the US Department of Agriculture regarding local quarantine restrictions and movement controls.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
INDIA, Thailand, Pakistan, New Zealand, Australia and nine other countries in south and south-east Asia are to better control foot-and-mouth disease, by strengthening links between national laboratories. Notably, a new regional reference laboratory in Thailand will be established, sending out affordable test kits to countries that cannot usually afford them.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
MEASURES to control BSE, which were to have expired on June 30 this year, will be extended for two more years, if a proposal made last Wednesday (5/3) by the European Commission, is approved by the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union-funded Euro 2.2 million database is being developed in Macedonia to identify and track beef, veal, lamb and goat livestock, monitoring their health status and preventing sick beasts being exported into the EU. The project is being managed by the European Agency for Reconstruction, which recently helped stage a seminar on the system involving EU experts.…

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 ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has banned the export of live poultry and hatching eggs from Belgium and halted their transportation within the country. This follows reports of a possible outbreak in the province of Antwerp of avian influenza – a highly contagious poultry disease that Brussels says can cause severe economic damage to the industry and which has already recently broken out in the neighbouring Netherlands.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
LIFE isn’t going to get any easier for hill and mountain farmers if Dr Franz Fischler, EU farm commissioner, has his way. He wants to “de-couple” payments from production for farmers generally and introduce direct fixed supports based on farm size, past output and acceptance of environmental and other standards.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH negotiators failing this Monday to agree liberalisation targets for the World Trade Organisation’s three years old agricultural talks – missing a March 31 deadline – member governments are facing a stiff challenge.

They have until the WTO’s next ministerial summit at Cancun, Mexico, in September, to strike a deal or face potential chaos at this meeting.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A BAND of pirates that hijacked a ship carrying aluminium ingots off Indonesia in 1999 has been convicted and jailed by an Indian court. The decision has been welcomed by the International Chamber of Commerce as a welcome and rare example of a country prosecuting piracy in international waters.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has formally proposed the scrapping of anti-dumping proceedings that could have led to the reimposition of duties on Chinese exports into the European Union of magnesium. Brussels has also refused to accept calls that it propose that existing duties are removed retroactively – to June 2002 – when the complaint sparking a review into their renewal was withdrawn.…