Search Results for: Mexico

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CREATING finished leather from tanned leather, (in its wet state), is not sufficiently important a manufacturing process to warrant the final product being legally considered a new good, made in the country where it was processed rather than where it was sourced, the chairman of a special World Trade Organisation committee has advised.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE RICHES that can be made from the illegal ivory trade are well known, but what of illicit imports and exports of rare flowers. Shipping protected orchids to Europe, Japan and north America can make criminals a lot of money.…

KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPE’S retail businesses and associations have been asked to comment on detailed plans released by the European Commission for a broad ‘framework’ directive on fair trading; the legislation may for instance, ban “business from engaging in commercial practices that are misleading or likely to mislead the consumer.”…

Keith Nuthall
A SPECIAL conference on settling a number of maritime border disputes in the Caribbean has been launched, which could help develop international law regarding the effect of uninhabited island on establishing exclusive economic zones.

One wrangle is between Venezuela and the Caribbean island state of St Kitts and Nevis, which has been protesting about maritime boundary treaties concluded by the south American state regarding the so-called Isla Aves; they grant the islands full territorial sea status, including an exclusive economic zone, or continental shelf.…

BTY MARK ROWE
THE TOBACCO industry has not been exempt from the problem of young children working in developing countries. But in the past 12 months BAT has taken significant steps to address the question of child labour. Earlier this year it helped launch the Elimination of Child Labour in Tobacco Growing Foundation, which supports community-based initiatives to address the issue.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MEXICO and the United States made pledges on several food industry issues during recent two-day talks. The countries have agreed to work together on sanitary policies, animal health, food safety, and research. US-Mexico agricultural trade has doubled since 1993 to US$13 billion in 2001.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN AGREEMENT supporting research into new technologies for food distribution has been signed by the EU, Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UN Food and Agricultural Organisation and the UN Conference on Trade and Development are developing a task force helping developing countries establish administrative regimes guarantee that locally produced organic foods were made without artificial aids. UNCTAD promotes organic production as sustainable, because its labour intensity and lack of expensive chemical inputs matches poor countries’ economic realities.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE US Departments of Energy and the Interior are joining forces to use oil from federally leased land in the Gulf of Mexico for America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, an emergency crude oil stockpile. Equiva Trading Co. of Houston won the contract to supply additional oil, upping the reserve by 18.6 million barrels.…

Keith Nuthall
MEMBER governments of the World Trade Organisation have agreed to embark on two-phase talks to meet the 2003 deadline for completing negotiations on a multilateral registration system for geographical indications of wines and spirits.

The WTO’s TRIPS (trade related aspects of intellectual property rights) council has broadly agreed that a single draft document should be written by early next year, even if this included alternative options.…