Search Results for: hong Kong

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EU agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has said it is “absolutely necessary” to agree reforms to the European sugar market system by this November, to give the industry sufficient notice of the changes, given the current regime expires in July 2006.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EVERY vegetable farmer knows that planting methods are crucial to the success of a crop: spacing seeds, nurturing them with water and feed, protecting them from pests. Well, this is a good analogy for the current state of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) agricultural liberalisation talks in Geneva.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TRADE and agriculture ministers meeting in Kenya to energise the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Doha Development Round have made progress on moving towards a system where tariffs are always expressed as percentages of the price of products. This would simplify the existing set-up where some duties are fixed prices, or valued per measurement unit.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE LEATHER industry could shed significant numbers of jobs in poor and rich countries following a successful World Trade Organisation (WTO) Doha Development Round agreement on industrial and textile goods. Its aim is to slash tariffs across the board, and in that instance, said a UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report, there will be winners and losers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

TRADE ministers meeting at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Hong Kong last night (Sunday) set a tight timetable for agreeing of the Doha Development Round’s overall goals on agricultural liberalisation, saying these long discussed ‘modalities’ must be approved by April 30.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

TRADE ministers at the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Hong Kong summit are struggling today to reach a compromise deal on the vexed question of cotton subsidies that will prevent west African exporters scuppering an overall agreement. The United States has been under pressure to abandon its production payments to American growers, which are highly politically sensitive in the US.…

BY TAMARA VANTROYEN, in Hong Kong

IT is not just a rumour anymore: China is officially upgrading its water quality, a move welcome to drinks manufacturers that rely on and control costs through guaranteed clean water supplies. China launched new drinking water standards in June, raising the number of forbidden water pollutants from 35 to 101.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

DECEMBER 2005’s semi-successful World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Hong Kong means that the sacrifice forced upon the European Union’s (EU) well protected sugar sector the month before will – largely – be worth the pain. Unlike the previous big WTO meeting, in Cancun, Mexico, trade ministers did not leave in rancour having achieved little.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

HIGHLY undiplomatic exchanges between the European Union (EU) and the United States over the vexed question of cotton subsidies have threatened to obstruct agreement at the already tough parallel talks on general agricultural liberalisation at the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Hong Kong summit.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

NON-DIOXIN LIKE PCB CONTAMINATION WARNING – EFSA

THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has called on the food industry to further minimise non-dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls (NDL-PCBs) in food, because of health concerns about excess contamination. * http://www.efsa.eu.int/science/contam/contam_opinions/1229/contam_op_ej284_ndl-pcb_en1.pdf

ECJ SMOKED FLAVOURINGS CRISPS – BRITAIN APPEAL

A EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) has rejected a British government attempt to strike down a EU regulation controlling smoke flavourings in foods.…