Search Results for: Belgium

BY MONICA DOBIE
SCIENTISTS from the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the USA are using a form of plastic sheeting called Hytibar to develop an environmentally safe way of preventing ozone-depleting gas from the pesticide methyl bromide reaching the atmosphere.

The plastic, manufactured by Klerk’s Plastic in Belgium, is made by putting a barrier polymer (ethylene vinyl alcohol) between two layers of polyethylene; this makes the film less permeable and therefore better able to keep the chemical from escaping into the air.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON
THE WORLD is waking up to biofuels, increasingly produced from food crops and their waste by-products, and now one of the growing energy alternatives to conventional fossil fuels. As prices for traditional energy rise year on year, and energy watchers warn of oil production peaking around 2010, governments are looking towards food producers to grow the raw feedstock for the fuel of the twenty-first century.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has fined Akzo Nobel, BASF and UCB Euro 66.34 million for operating between 1992-8 a cartel for choline chloride (CORRECT SPELLING) cartel (poultry and pig feed additive vitamin B4). These Dutch, German and Belgium chemical companies set European prices and market shares.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has fined Akzo Nobel, BASF and UCB Euro 66.34 million for operating between 1992-8 a cartel for choline chloride (CORRECT SPELLING) cartel (poultry and pig feed additive vitamin B4). These Dutch, German and Belgium chemical companies set European prices and market shares with the USA’s DuCoa and Canada’s Chinook, escaping fines by leaving the cartel.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CIGARETTES continue to be a key source of revenue for fraudsters and smugglers in the European Union (EU), with the EU institutions’ anti-fraud unit OLAF saying they have generated more criminal money than anything else in investigations open this June.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is sending legal and accounting specialists to Nigeria and Kenya, to help them trace and recover money stolen by previous corrupt governments. The Vienna-based agency says it will “conduct in-depth assessments of the institutional and legal frameworks” in these countries, making detailed proposals to “overcome obstacles to asset recovery”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INSTITUTIONS of the European Union (EU) always say they are getting a handle on the fraud that riddles their operations, but are they? Keith Nuthall looks at the latest annual report from EU fraud-fighters OLAF.

MEASURING fraud is notoriously difficult, given that the aim of this crime is to be as undetectable as possible.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE LAST people most farmers would like controlling European agricultural policy are glib public relations experts, armed with palm-top digital personal organisers and a sheaf of focus group studies. Such complaints have often been levelled at the Blair government, accused of bending with the wind of public opinion.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) is largely on track for a timely start to its emissions trading system on January 1, with the unconditional approval in late October of six more CO2 emission allocation plans, from Belgium, Estonia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Slovakia and Portugal.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union (EU) reference laboratory playing a key role in a new EU authorisation system for feed additives has been launched. Sited at the EU’s Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM), in Geel, Belgium, the laboratory will check methods used to detect residues in feed and food and maintain reference samples of all approve additives.…