Search Results for: Environmental health

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKE, in Columbo, Sri Lanka
A BILL banning advertising of alcohol in Sri Lanka has been adopted by country’s cabinet, following debates lasting nearly two years between health and drinks industry campaigners. The bill will now have to be submitted to the country’s parliament.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE PHARMACEUTICAL industry has been urged to embrace differential pricing policies in the developed and developing worlds, as a means of earning enough money to cover research costs, (in richer countries), whilst keeping drugs affordable in poorer countries.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has unveiled a series of new proposals that it intends to make in the latter half of this year, during the Belgian presidency of the European Union. In a statement issued by the Directorate General for Health and Consumer Protection, officials have that they intend to follow up the White Paper on Food Safety, issued in January 2000, with formal proposals including:

*A revision of the directive on the control of foot-and-mouth disease, drawing on the experience of the recent outbreak;

*Amendments for a revised directive on livestock and poultry diseases, including measures to control salmonella;

*A new regulation harmonising and reinforcing official controls on food and animal feed;

*Plans to phase out the use of four remaining antibiotics authorised for use in feed and fodder;

*A strategy to reduce the presence of dioxin in feed and food.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MEMBERS of the European Parliament have proposed changing the name of the nascent European Food Authority, to make it a European Food Safety Authority. The proposal is one of 200 amendments agreed by the parliament’s environment committee for approval by a later plenary session.…

Keith Nuthall
A DISPUTES panel of the World Trade Organisation has recommended that the USA repeal safeguard duties that it has imposed on imports of Pakistani combed cotton yarn. The decision follows hearings sparked by the failure of the US to abide by a WTO Textile Monitoring Body recommendation that they should be scrapped.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union money is to be spent on helping developing countries implement anti-smoking policies, the EU Council of Ministers (health), has concluded. It agreed that the spending should be part of the EU’s commitments under the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which is currently being discussed.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
In a test of national and international procedures to be followed after a nuclear accident, a simulated emergency has been carried out at the French reactor at Gravelines, near the border with Belgium across the English Channel. The test, which took place on May 22-23, involved “small plume of radioactivity being vented from the reactor, covering an evacuation area of 10 kilometres radius,” said David Kyd, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EU Council of Ministers has approved a European public health programme for the years 2001-2006, which is likely to lead to further efforts by Brussels to dissuade people from smoking. Ministers agreed that Euro 280 million should be spent on the plan, which will include the creation of a comprehensive data bank on habits affecting health, such as smoking.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has tried to make up for its failure to strike fishing access deal with Morocco by forging an improved agreement with its north African neighbour Mauritania which Brussels claims its “the most important with a third country” that it has made.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FRENCH government has been told to bring its statistical systems for measuring the environmental quality of its bathing water into line with EU standards. The European Court of Justice has supported a bid by the European Commission to declare the French system illegal, ordering Paris to pay costs.…