Search Results for: Environmental health

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A TASK force of world food standards body Codex Alimentarius has agreed detailed draft guidelines on how to assess the safety of genetically modified foodstuffs and on how to trace and remove from sale any product that is subsequently shown to pose a hazard to human health.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IF there’s one thing guaranteed to get up the nose of most livestock farmers, it is bleeding heart animal rights campaigners claiming that they do not give a fig about welfare. And this is especially so when that most contentious of topics, live exports, is brought up.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE SHAPE of a draft European directive on controlling future foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks has been unveiled by EU health and consumer affairs Commissioner David Byrne. Speaking to the European Parliament, he said that the legislation would reform rules on vaccination, boosting the use of new tests to make this treatment more effective and avoiding the “unnecessary slaughter and destruction of healthy animals.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EU’S Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health has approved a European Commission plan to ban the export of all live pigs and porcine semen, ova and embryos from the Rhineland-Palatinate region of Germany, except districts east of the Rhine.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CRIMINALS dream of a world without police and although such a concept might seem science-fiction, it is actually easy to commit offences away from the eyes of law enforcement: just hire a boat. On the high seas, there is no-one watching, which is why fishing crime is so common and difficult to detect.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
INTERNATIONAL moves to remove the maximum permitted dose of irradiation for food could lead to a major world trade dispute, which could undermine European Union regulations, says the London-based Food Irradiation Campaign, (FIC).

A joint study by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organisation has concluded that “no upper dose limit need be imposed” as irradiated foods are deemed “wholesome throughout the technologically useful dose range.”…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE SASKATCHEWAN provincial government in Canada has recently passed a restrictive act that prohibits the advertising and displaying of tobacco products in retail outlets where people under the age of eighteen are allowed on the premises.

Shopkeepers are forced to hide cigarettes from patrons by enclosing them in non- transparent cabinets, behind curtains or blinds or selling them from under the counter.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has been attacked for displaying “aggressive and unnecessary behaviour” against the tobacco industry after it announced that it intended to pursue its “smuggling” case against Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds and others in New York after the American court rejected the case on jurisdictional grounds.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
JTI-Macdonald Corp., Canada, has proposed that the federal government in Ottawa introduce an additional warning message on cigarette packages which would indicate that reduced tar products are not safer and that the tar levels should be prominent on cigarette packs.…

BY MARK ROWE
CHINA is drafting its first law governing the use of biotechnology in an attempt to protect public health and the environment. The law will seek to control the potentially harmful effects of genetically modified organisms, such as crops, in areas including research and imports from abroad.…