Archive

BY MONICA DOBIE
MOLSON and Labatt, Canada’s two beer giants, have moved to a second stage inm their legal battle over the right to use the “export” name on brands in Ontario.

The Ontario Court of Appeal has been asked to grant an injunction that would restrict Labatt from selling or advertising Oland Export Ale, a brand produced from Oland, which is a Halifax-based subsidiary of Labatt.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
WILDLIFE conservationists and beer makers in Canada have combined their efforts to produce a brew called SOS beer where a portion of the sales’ proceeds goes toward species and habitat protection.

A Quebec micro-brewery launched the project two years ago, and has just recently expanded it to neighbouring Ontario; it has designed labels for the bottles depicting endangered species of the two regions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development will lend Euro 14 million to a Czech subsidiary of French agri-business company Groupe Soufflet so it can expand its malting interests in the east European country. The money will enable Malterie Soufflet République Tchéque to acquire shares in Obchodní Sladovny, the malting subsidiary of Czech company Tchecomalt Group.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced a partial liberalisation of the rules covering wine labelling that should allow producers of ordinary still wine some scope for the use of more descriptive terms in the future. At present ordinary wine labels can carry only officially authorised terms whereas for sparkling wines and others, other words may be used, if they are not specifically banned.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SOME sensible words were spoken recently by the EU’s agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler on the way forward for farmers. His starting point was the quality of farm produce. Noone is going to say that quality has ever been far from farmers’ minds, but until recently it wasn’t really the first consideration.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
AT FIRST sight, the European Commission’s new proposals for guarding against future outbreaks of foot and mouth disease, and tackling them if they do, occur seem eminently reasonable from the farmer’s point of view. Not a lot of detail is yet known, and in any event ministers will have their say, but it seems the Brussels authorities have learned the right lessons from last year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IF there’s one thing guaranteed to get up the nose of most livestock farmers, it is bleeding heart animal rights campaigners claiming that they do not give a fig about welfare. And this is especially so when that most contentious of topics, live exports, is brought up.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s fish processing industry should become an integral concern of the EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), a European Parliament report has claimed, with Member States being directed to encourage its companies to become financially independent. MEP’s have voted to accept the report by German Christian Democrat Brigitte Langenhagen who said that state aid should only be paid out to processors in underdeveloped regions “which heavily depend on fisheries.”…

BY MONICA DOBIE
ASK most people what they do with maple syrup and the majority will reply they use it to drizzle over pancakes in the morning. Maple syrup producers in Quebec, the world’s leading producer of the sweet treat, are trying to change that.…

BY MARK ROWE
SUGARCANE production in Thailand’s Buri Ram province has been seriously affected by water shortages and disease, planters say. More than 50 per cent of the province’s cane crop has already been wiped out with the loss put at US$40 million.…