Search Results for: food

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD food standards body, Codex Alimentarius, has adopted new quality guidelines for chocolate. Its new global standards set a minimum 35 per cent by volume of cocoa solids in products marketed as ‘chocolate’ and a minimum 20 per cent in ‘chocolate type’ products, such as chocolate flakes.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
EUROPEAN Union (EU) beef producers will be able to retain most of their existing production-linked subsidies in spite of a major reform of the Common Agricultural Policy agreed by farm ministers of the 15 member countries early today (Thursday).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
POLITICAL agreement has been secured at the EU Council of Ministers over the proposed EU regulation boosting health controls on fresh meat, live bivalve molluscs, and milk and milk products.…

BY PHILIP FINE

DEMOGRAPHICS are changing the contents of supermarket freezers in the US. ‘Ethnic’ frozen food sales reached US$2.2 billion in 2001, according to the American Frozen Food Institute. The biggest growth has been Mexican, which grew 20.6 percent to US$488 million, followed by Asian, which include Chinese, Thai and Indian, up 12.3 percent, totalling US$463 million.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE GLOBAL food standards body Codex Alimentarius has opened its 26th ruling session, with representatives from its 169 country members debating standards for assessing the risk of foods created by biotechnology. These rules would cover issues such as pre-market safety evaluations, product tracing and post-market monitoring.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE RISK of a European Union (EU) ban on smoky bacon flavoured crisps seems to have been averted, with the European Parliament passing amendments to proposed EU food safety legislation allowing all existing smoking practices to continue. Instead, only new methods of combining smoke flavourings with foods would have to be approved by the European Food Safety Authority, said the parliament.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Croatia’s Zagrebacka Banka (ZABA) have created a risk-sharing loan facility for Croatian food processors, producers and traders totalling Euro 71.4 million.…

BY PHILIP FINE

IN a push to promote American agricultural products overseas, the country’s Department of Agriculture is giving US$110 million (GBPounds 67 million) to 65 American trade organisations. One fifth of the money will go to the various regional trade associations, while the US Meat Export Federation, will receive US$10 million and several citrus promoters will be given US$6 million to promote their products.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE US government wants to limit pharmaceutical manufacturers to a one-month window in which to challenge a generic patent. Washington says multiple, consecutive patent challenges have been costing American billions of dollars in drugs costs. The Bush administration estimates that its planned regulatory changes will save consumers an estimated US$35 billion over 10 years.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced its first Euro 166 million tranche of funding for food and food safety projects, via the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme on research. While not releasing individual budgets for successful projects, it highlighted funding a “key network of excellence” on prion diseases, including BSE.…