Search Results for: Environmental health

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A BID by Northumbrian Water to comply with the European Union’s revised drinking water and urban wastewater treatment directives could net the utility up to Pounds 100 million in loans from the European Investment Bank. Its officials are considering funding a number of water supply and wastewater schemes throughout Northumbrian’s northern England service area.…

BY RICHARD HURST
SOUTH Africa’s Sappi Adamas paper mill, which produces 35,000 tonnes of paper per annum for export and local markets at Deal Party, near Port Elizabeth, recently celebrated its 50th birthday by gaining ISO 14001 working practice accreditation. Dave Glazebrook, Adamas general manager said it was the first step in reducing the mill’s environmental impact.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed he creation of a new Euro 13 million per annum scheme to monitor the health of Europe’s forests. Assuming it is approved by European Union ministers, the programme would initially run from January 2003 until December 2008.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
SMALL shops in Ireland are losing Euros 450 (Pounds 300) worth of shopping baskets every month on average, following the introduction of a Euro 15 cent (10p) environmental levy on plastic carrier bags, according to an Irish small retailers group.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
WE all want to eat safely, which is why governments pass laws to ensure that all food sold measures up to minimum standards of purity and quality. But this can be taken too far. If the safety lines are drawn too tightly or in an arbitrary way, they can be a barrier to imports and thus an impediment to free trade.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WIDERANGING public consultation on the use of the European Union’s planned satellite-based environmental monitoring system (GMES) has been launched. The European Commission will be staging a series of open meetings on the system, operational by 2008. Advice culled from these forums will be included in a report to be published next year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed new tougher animal health regulations for live exports, which would insist on high standards of cleanliness at staging posts created to rest livestock in transit. The new rules – which must be approved by European Union ministers to take effect – would tell staging post managers to “clean and disinfect” the areas within 24 hours of a visit by transported animals.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SWITZERLAND has complained to a key World Trade Organisation committee that its beef imports are being unfairly restricted by the USA because of concerns that they are contaminated with BSE. It has claimed at the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures Committee that the US should not, for example, be insisting on the onsite inspection of Swiss meat plants, because the Office International des Épizooties has classified Switzerland as having a low incidence the disease.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PRODUCERS of wine in Belarus can heave a sigh of relief; if they import wine must from France to ferment, they can still brand it as French wine, under a global rule of origin proposed by a special World Trade Organisation committee.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON
EASTERN European countries that built nuclear power plants while under the communist system never thought they would face deadlines for closing them down as a prerequisite for joining the European Union. Neither had they built in the next stage – decommissioning – into the prices charged for electricity in the way that the western European nuclear plant operators had done from the start.…