Search Results for: Environmental health

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GERMANY has admitted there were flaws in its testing for BSE in certain non-approved laboratories. The German agriculture minister Renate Kunast detailed “certain deficiencies” to other EU farm ministers this week, but said that measures had now been taken to correct matters on the advice of the European Commission.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GLOBAL Forum on Food Safety Regulators has been staged by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, (FAO), and the World Health Organisation, reflecting concern about recent food safety incidents, such as BSE, that the FAO claims have “caused serious turmoil in the world food markets and raised concern among consumers.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE GLOBAL Partnership to Eliminate Riverblindness has announced that US$39 million has been pledged by its members to wipe out Onchocerciasis, (Riverblindness), in the whole of Africa by 2010. The group includes the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the US Agency for International Development and 30 African countries, along with private pharmaceutical companies, (including Merck).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nation’s Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in developing countries has financial commitments from the private and public sector of US$1.5 billion, the World Health Organisation has claimed. The first meeting of the fund’s board was to have taken place on January 28.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FUTURE of US tariff preferences for Cambodian clothing exports looks guaranteed for another year, after an International Labour Organisation gave the country another relatively clean bill of health regarding working standards in its garment industry. While stressing problems regarding wages, overtime and unions, the UN agency concluded improvements were made to working conditions in various factories following earlier reports.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has made good on its plans to table formal legislation forcing polluters to pay for the cleansing of the European Union’s land, seas, rivers and atmosphere from the toxins that they have released.

Ministers will now be asked to approve a directive on environmental liability, allowing public authorities to hold companies legally responsible, not only for repairing ecological damage, but also for taking precautions to prevent such problems.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TECHNOLOGICAL advancement seems to go hand in hand with miniaturisation; witness the development of the mobile phone from its 1980’s high-tech brick to today’s tiny handset; smaller than the devices used by Captain Kirk in the early Star Trek episodes that peered centuries into the future.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND MARK ROWE
THE EUROPEAN Union has agreed a suspension of Chinese imports of molluscs, crustaceans, frozen shrimps and prawns because of concerns about contamination; it follows the discovery of “serious deficiencies” in China’s medical residue control system and “problems related to the use of banned substances in the veterinary field.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH formal approval being secured for the launch of the European Food Safety Authority, the European Commission has promised to work swiftly so that the new body can be operational by the end of this year in its temporary home in Evere, north Brussels.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SERIES of good practice recommendations on the prevention and detection of e-coli outbreaks has been issued by the European Commission, following a study of how six EU Member States deal with the pathogen.

Officials looked at the monitoring and control systems for red meat and milk in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Portugal and Sweden and concluded that although all were alert to the risks of e-coli contamination, there was a wide range of different public and private control measures.…