Search Results for: food

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FARMERS and food industry cooperatives have been encouraged by the European Commission to use the Internet as a way of improving communications with fellow producers, processors, distributors and customers.

Speaking to the Praesidium of EU cooperative movement COGECA, information society commissioner Erkki Liikanen urged these rural industries not to miss out on the opportunities offered by the development of e-commerce technologies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MINISTERS from the 15 EU member governments have cut back the proposed representation of the European Commission on the management board that will run the new European Food Authority. Instead of four members on the 16-member panel, the Commission is to have only one.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRUSSELS is always looking for big ideas by which it can justify its existence to a doubting public and one of the latest of these is the concept of a European Research Area. This idea is that Europe – with its patchwork of nations and national research units – should coordinate its academics and researchers, making sure that they do not duplicate their efforts, rather dovetailing them with a single European goal in mind.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A MAJOR extension of the powers of the European Medicines Evaluation Agency (EMEA) has been proposed by the European Commission as part of a sweeping reform of EU pharmaceutical legislation. At present the EMEA authorises only the use of high profile medicines derived from biotechnology, such as those used for cancer, AIDS, multiple schlerosis and Alzheimers disease among others.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has unveiled a series of new proposals that it intends to make in the latter half of this year, during the Belgian presidency of the European Union. In a statement issued by the Directorate General for Health and Consumer Protection, officials have that they intend to follow up the White Paper on Food Safety, issued in January 2000, with formal proposals including:

*A revision of the directive on the control of foot-and-mouth disease, drawing on the experience of the recent outbreak;

*Amendments for a revised directive on livestock and poultry diseases, including measures to control salmonella;

*A new regulation harmonising and reinforcing official controls on food and animal feed;

*Plans to phase out the use of four remaining antibiotics authorised for use in feed and fodder;

*A strategy to reduce the presence of dioxin in feed and food.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE PROTECTION of the public from accidental contamination created by nuclear radiation does not just involve nuclear energy or defence installations, a European Commission report on radiation protection has pointed out. Other industries also use what are known as “elevated contents of naturally occurring radionuclides, (NORMs),” and these sites often require special radioactive clean-ups.…

BY KATE REW
AMERICAN consumers continue to pay high prices for sugar products despite the fact that prices of sugar beet have hit devastatingly low levels at the farm gate, according to the President of the American Sugarbeet Association, Ray Van Driessche.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GLOBAL Forum on Food Safety Regulators is to be staged by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation and the World Health Organisation in October, reflecting concern about recent food safety incidents, such as BSE, that the FAO claims have “caused serious turmoil in the world food markets and raised concern among consumers.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MEMBERS of the European Parliament have proposed changing the name of the nascent European Food Authority, to make it a European Food Safety Authority. The proposal is one of 200 amendments agreed by the parliament’s environment committee for approval by a later plenary session.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organisation, (FAO), has handed over 290 new fishing boats, canoes and nets to Mozambican fishermen, whose equipment was destroyed when flooding and a cyclone struck the country last year.

Its donation – funded by the Italian government – was the final stage of an FAO rehabilitation project for Inhambane, Sofala and Gaza Provinces.…