Search Results for: Environmental health

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE SHAPE of a draft European directive on controlling future foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks has been unveiled by EU health and consumer affairs Commissioner David Byrne. Speaking to the European Parliament, he said that the legislation would reform rules on vaccination, boosting the use of new tests to make this treatment more effective and avoiding the “unnecessary slaughter and destruction of healthy animals.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has been attacked for displaying “aggressive and unnecessary behaviour” against the tobacco industry after it announced that it intended to pursue its “smuggling” case against Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds and others in New York after the American court rejected the case on jurisdictional grounds.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CRIMINALS dream of a world without police and although such a concept might seem science-fiction, it is actually easy to commit offences away from the eyes of law enforcement: just hire a boat. On the high seas, there is no-one watching, which is why fishing crime is so common and difficult to detect.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has ordered tests on all imports of shrimps from Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar, (Burma), and poultry from Thailand to ensure antibiotic residues do not exceed EU health limits, following concerns raised by spot-checks.…

BY PHILIP FINE

YES, whole oat products and foods containing psyllium will lower cholesterol levels and reduce heart disease, says the American Council on Science and Health. In a new booklet that takes most of the health claims for functional foods to task, they also agree that soy foods and foods made with soy protein have shown the same health benefits.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON
THE USA dominates the world’s soft-drinks markets with its Coca Cola, Pepsi and affiliated brands, so can the big players in the European bottled mineral water industry achieve a similar success with brands such as Evian, Volvic and Perrier?…

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 MARK ROWE
CHINA is drafting its first law governing the use of biotechnology in an attempt to protect public health and the environment. The law will seek to control the potentially harmful effects of genetically modified organisms, such as crops, in areas including research and imports from abroad.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE GERMAN, Italian, Greek and Portuguese governments may soon be ordered to pass laws insisting that motorised outdoor gardening equipment used in their countries abide by European Union noise legislation.

Formal legal proceedings at the European Court of Justice has been threatened against all four governments by the European Commission, which claims that they failed to meet a July 2001 deadline to implement the directive 2000/14/EC on noise emissions from outdoor equipment.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ALMOST all eastern European countries applying to join the EU have asked for special transitional periods averaging three years to raise health standards at some of their food processing plants to meet EU regulations. Products from plants where improvements are still being made will not be able to circulate the EU.…