Search Results for: Brazil

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels
PROPOSALS for a new European Union (EU) wine regime, which are currently under review, will be unveiled in 12 months’ time according to the recently installed European Commissioner for agriculture, Mrs Mariann Fischer Boel.

In a wide-ranging interview in her Brussels office she admitted that the present arrangements are not working.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GROUP of cotton exporting countries are resisting a move by the United States to dilute the mandate of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) cotton sub-committee, formed to find agreement on this sensitive issue during the WTO Doha Development Round.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels
SUGAR quotas covering imports from some of the world’s poorest economies are not a feasible option, according to the European Union’s (EU) Commissioner for agriculture, Mrs Mariann Fischer Boel.

She told Confectionary Production at her Brussels office that such quotas would inevitably mean higher prices with consequent damage for the Union’s sugar producers and for the industry, especially where they were set at a lower level than national consumptions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) rapid consumer alert service RASFF has warned of a spate of aflatoxin contamination in peanuts, groundnuts and hazelnuts from Turkey, Azerbaijan, Brazil and China, and in Turkish dried figs.

ENDS…

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

COSMETICS, perfume and personal hygiene companies in the Mercosur region of South America will have to stage annual health inspections of their manufacturing systems under a resolution agreed by member states Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. These will have to demonstrate that companies are following prescribed Mercosur standards of good practice, with written reports being produced by in-house laboratories, detailing results and any reforms that are required.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INSURANCE industry will wait attentively for the responses due in May to formal requests made this week by the European Commission for its World Trade Organisation (WTO) partners to liberalise their financial sectors.

These notes were made within the WTO’s Doha Development Round’s talks on services, which are in technical terms more advanced than the other portions of the negotiations.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE OFFICE International des Épizooties (OIE), the world animal health organisation, has confirmed that white spot disease has been detected for the first time in Brazil, infecting Pacific white shrimp. The announcement follows investigations by the Brazilian agriculture ministry’s Department of Animal Protection into three outbreaks amongst fish farms in Santa Catarina state, southern Brazil.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AUTO manufacturing firms will be closely monitoring next week’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Hong Kong for signs that the WTO’s long-running Doha Development Round talks are about to crack open national automobile markets. Key auto industry countries – the US, the European Union, Canada, Japan, South Korea, India and Brazil – have been making steady progress this year in identifying non-tariff barriers to trade they would like to remove, such as burdensome customs procedures, technical engineering rules and licences.…

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.…