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BY ALAN OSBORN
THE LATEST report of the European Court of Auditors on annual spending by the European Union is depressingly familiar. It says the figures do not warrant official approval. It puts a questionmark over some Pounds 2.5 billion out of the pounds 50 billion spent by the EU in 2000, with most of the suspect figures again in the farm sector.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Trade Organisation has agreed at its ministerial meeting in Qatar, to intensify its ongoing agriculture talks, which cover meat and meat products. Ministers laid down a deadline of the next WTO summit, which must take place in 2003, for member governments to propose a complete list of formal concessions they are prepared to make on quotas, tariffs, subsidies and other trade barriers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has been accusing the United States of having double standards over agricultural subsidies, by pushing for grant cuts and free trade at the World Trade Organisation, whilst supporting handouts at home.

EU agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler has been especially vocal, following the vote in the US Congress for a Farm Bill, which includes a ten-year increase in price-linked support for farmers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Commission report Wastes Spread on Land has called for special care to be taken with the disposal of abattoir blood, guts and bones in this way, to minimise environmental problems. The study was written because of the increasing demand to reuse and recycle waste, and concludes that with abbatoir waste, “it is imperative that land application is handled with great care.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SPAIN has lost two bids at the European Court of Justice to overturn the refusal by the European Commission to fully meet Spanish claims for European grants for meat subsidies, because of concerns about Madrid’s “weak” anti-fraud controls.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
AMERICA’S Kraft Foods Inc. has agreed to sell its Pilar biscuit business in Brazil, to two undisclosed privately held companies in the country, as part of a Latin American restructuring programme that will include three plant closures and 500 job cuts.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
CHOCOLATE sales have been buoyed in Canada following the attacks in the United States says John Rowsome, President of the Confectionery Manufacturers of Canada. Speaking to the Toronto Globe and Mail he said that a recent boom could not just be explained by the traditional increase in north American demand during the Halloween period.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE APPELLATE body of the World Trade Organisation has ruled that Mexico’s imposition of anti-dumping duties on imports of high fructose corn syrup from the US breaks world trade rules and so should be amended or scrapped. The panel found that Mexico had “inadequately considered the impact of dumped imports on the (Mexican corn syrup) industry.”…

BY MONICA DOBIE
A VEGETABLE-based bio-diesel fuel is being tested in vehicles used by the Toronto Hydro Company electricity utility, the first such large-scale trial in Ontario. The fuel is a mixture of 20 per cent corn oil and 80 per cent low-sulphur diesel, and will be tested throughout the winter.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EASTERN Europe’s vast district heating systems could be converted from dirty solid fuels to cleaner oil and gas in future, because of a Euro 100 million investment in the region’s energy efficiency by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.…