Archive
International News Services archives articles supplied to clients one year or more after initial publication. These articles are protected by a password and not made available to readers without permission from clients. They are used as a background resource by agency journalists. Upon client requests, International News Services will remove such articles from the archive or not upload them in the first place. They are included to demonstrate the breadth of topics undertaken by the agency and also to help promote clients’ coverage.
BANANAS
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has stepped up a quarrel with France over bananas, where Brussels says French importers are entitled to only 4,000 tonnes of reduced-duty imports a year; France is insisting on 50,000 tonnes. Paris has now been given a month to respond or face action in the European Court of Justice.…
INDIA
BY KEITH NUTHALL
INDIA’S Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has issued new health standards for meat and meat products, namely corned beef, luncheon meat, cooked ham, chopped meat, canned chicken, canned mutton and goat meat, frozen mutton and goat meat, focusing on microbiological requirements, the use of food additives and metal contaminants.…
VITAMIN CARTEL
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has fined eight companies Euro 855.22 million for participating in cartels inflating prices of vitamins they produced between 1989 and 1999. Companies involved included Switzerland’s Hoffman-La Roche, BASF, of (Germany), AG Aventis SA, (France), Solvay Pharmaceuticals BV, (Netherlands), Merck KgaA, (Germany), Daiichi Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, (Japan), Eisai Co Ltd, (Japan), and Takeda Chemical Industries Ltd, (Japan).…
NUT AID
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed a one-year extension to the EU’s production aid scheme for certain nuts and locust beans, which was due to be phased out in January. Brussels wants EU ministers to continue funding until June 2002, along with a specific flat-rate aid scheme for hazelnuts production.…
MEAT DISPOSAL
BY KEITH NUTHALL
GUERNSEY has had startlingly high BSE infection rates since the onset of the epidemic, a new statistical report from the International Office of Epizootics has claimed; it shows that the Channel Isles jurisdiction has had often 10 times more cases per head of cattle aged more than two years than in mainland UK.…
RESEARCH
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has voted for the oncoming 2002-6 Euro 16.2 billion EU Sixth Framework Programme on research to fund studies on “all aspects of food safety in the food chain from primary production to food processing.”…
LEGUMES
BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union research project – the Medicago scheme – is trying to discover knowledge about the genes of legumes such as the grain pea to boost their usage in Europe; five per cent of cultivated EU farmland is used for legume production, compared with more than 25 per cent in the USA.…
EFA
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has again voted for a name change for the proposed European Food Authority, which will henceforth be known as the European Food Safety Authority, unless ministers overturn the move. MEP’s also voted to streamline its management board and boost its democratic accountability, regarding public meetings and documents.…
FISH STOCKS
BY KEITH NUTHALL
FISHING catch quotas in European Union territorial waters are to be slashed again to reduce pressure on stocks, which Brussels says “are in a parlous state.” The European Commission proposed a reduction of the total allowable catch of haddock in the Irish Sea by 52%, sole in the North Sea by 25% and langoustines in the Bay of Biscay by between 45 and 50%.…
PORT QUEBEC
BY MONICA DOBIE
WHAT is the region with the highest port consumption in the world? A fair assumption would be Portugal or maybe England, but actually, it is the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec.
Port sales in the Canadian province have exploded from 276,000 750 ml bottles in 1995, to an estimated 3 million this year.…