Search Results for: Climate change

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union ministers have been asked to extend the legal duty on EU steel manufacturers to supply substantial amounts of statistics about their outputs and inputs, at least until the end of this year. With the expiry of the European Coal and Steel Community in July, the regulation forcing them to collate the figures would have lapsed, but the European Commission has formally tabled that it be extended until December, following calls from EU policy units and national ministries that the statistics should continue to be made available.…

Keith Nuthall
Members of the European Parliament are pressing for a partial delay to the introduction of the European Commission’s block exemption reforms, by proposing a two year delay to the introduction of the right of dealers to establish themselves in foreign Member States.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
AT FIRST sight, the European Commission’s new proposals for guarding against future outbreaks of foot and mouth disease, and tackling them if they do, occur seem eminently reasonable from the farmer’s point of view. Not a lot of detail is yet known, and in any event ministers will have their say, but it seems the Brussels authorities have learned the right lessons from last year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
REFORMS to European Union law that would force all Member States to adopt programmes to fight the food poisoning and food-born diseases will be made tougher still, if amendments proposed by a key European Parliament committee become law.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IN an interesting recent analysis of the problems facing livestock and other food producers in Europe, the European Union agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler suggested that one way forward could be through contract farming.

Instead of producing in the traditional way for the open market, he said, producers might consider linking with retail groups or the meat processing industry and delivering precisely what was needed in terms of both quality and quantity.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
ONTARIO tobacco growers have recently rejected the idea of selling their individual crops directly to buyers by an overwhelming margin of 98.5 per cent in a plebiscite organized by the Ontario Flue-Cured Tobacco Growers’ Marketing Board. The organisation who say it is “in response to extensive efforts by Imperial Tobacco to convince producers to support its self-serving proposal for direct contracting.”…

BY PHILIP FINE

BP Exploration has outlined its plan for oil-leak prevention to Alaska state regulators after calls for improvements in its operations. The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission had ordered the company to explain how it would better monitor and maintain the more than 1,000 critical valves at the biggest and oldest oil field at the state’s North Slope patch.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE, in Sydney
AN AUSTRALIAN early warning device that monitors water quality in tuna cages and phones its information back to shore is proving to be a lifesaver for aquaculture fish stocks; the slightest change in conditions can wipe out millions of dollars worth of marine stocks and cripple sectors of the industry.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank is to extend for another five years a stipend scheme that has successfully encouraged poor and rural families in Bangladesh to send their girls to secondary schools that were until recently predominantly male.

Working with the country’s directorate of secondary and higher education, which operates the programme, the bank is to loan Dhaka US$120.9 million interest free.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE, in Sydney
AUSTRALIAN scientists are experimenting with an early warning device that monitors water quality in tuna cages and phones its vital information back to shore. The aim of the machine is to save the fish farming industry in Australia and others around the world millions of dollars.…