Search Results for: Environmental health

BY RICHARD HURST
SOUTH African National Ports Authority chief executive Siyabonga Gama has announced that the re-release of tenders for the building of a ship repair facility at the Richard’s Bay port, in Kwazulu-Natal, would be issued early in March.

Its construction is expected to cost between Rand 2 billion, (Pounds 122 million), and 5 billion, (307 million), directly creating 400 new jobs with an estimated 1,200 indirect jobs being generated in varied fields such as steel, electrical engineering and shop fitting.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WHAT could be more straightforward or fairer, you might think, than the European Union’s veterinary and phytosanitary agreements with non-member countries?

The idea is that each party pledges that the food it exports to the other – be it derived from animals or plants – meets the requirements of its own food safety legislation and that this is then taken on trust by the receiving country.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH the rulebook of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming all but written, the European Commission has been considering innovative ways regarding waste management in which it can help reduce the EU’s production of greenhouse gases.

A new paper written for the Commission’s directorate general by consultants AEA Technology proposes the segregation of municipal waste, so that materials such as paper, metals, textiles and plastics can be recycled, and decomposable refuse be composted.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND ALAN OSBORN
PUBLIC expenditure on social protection – including pensions and health care, as well as benefits and social services – fell in the UK and the European Union between 1996 and 1999, having risen quite sharply in the first years of the 1990’s, a report from Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency has claimed.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE NEW European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has now virtually completed its legislative journey through the EU institutions and is set to begin operations in the first half of next year though we’re still not sure where. Helsinki was the favourite for the seat until the Italian prime minister signor Berlusconi rudely pushed the claims of Parma, dismissing the Finns as “people who don’t know what prosciutto is.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INDIA’S Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has issued new health standards for meat and meat products, namely corned beef, luncheon meat, cooked ham, chopped meat, canned chicken, canned mutton and goat meat, frozen mutton and goat meat, focusing on microbiological requirements, the use of food additives and metal contaminants.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched an investigation into state aid payments made by the French government to compensate shellfish farmers harmed by the oil spill following the sinking of the tanker Erika in the Bay of Biscay and also damages from a particularly violent storm, both in December 1999.…

KEITH NUTHALL
INNOVATION is important in the provision of water services, whether that be to prevent the contamination of supplies by a return of this summer’s floods, or to source drinking water for arid areas where ground reserves are running dry.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Parliament this week (on December 11th) cleared the way for a European Food Safety Authority early next year with powers to set and monitor safety standards for the entire food chain “from farm to fork.”…

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
THE OWNERS of 20 textile factories in Newcastle, South Africa, have threatened to relocate to nearby Lesotho after being instructed to eliminate dangerous working conditions and pay the minimum wage by the country’s department of labour.…