Search Results for: United Nations

BY PHILIP FINE

TRADE Ministers at recent Free Trade Area of the Americas meetings have failed to strike an agreement that slashes north and south American food tariffs and subsidies. No deadlines were set to solve this rancorous issue, with the United States and Brazil opting for a solution to be struck at the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE UNITED States government has integrated information on all its consumer product recalls onto one central website, offering a convenient service to retailers. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has launched the English and Spanish-language site (www.recalls.gov) in collaboration with five other federal agencies.…

Keith Nuthall
THE ESTABLISHMENT of an International Foundation for the Law of the Sea has taken place at Hamburg, 21 years after the agreement of the United Nations Convention on the Law for the Sea. The Foundation will promote research, training and publications on maritime law, supporting the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, also based in Hamburg.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE UNITED States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a guide for the US pharmaceutical industry, named “Pharmacogenomic Data Submissions.” The document was created to help drug companies comply with a new FDA recommendation that requires firms to submit results of genomic tests when seeking approval for new drugs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
POLITICAL leaders in Brussels have been pressed to promote the planting of poplar and willow trees across the European Union (EU) to promote rural development, soil stability and biological de-contamination of ground pollutants. The call has come from the United Nations’ (UN) Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), which runs a statutory body called the International Poplar Commission.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE UNITED States will become the largest wine market in the world by the end of the decade, according to the California-based Wine Institute. Currently, only France and Italy have more demand for wine and last year, whilst wine consumption dropped to 370 million cases in France, American consumers drank 14 million more cases, rising to 250 million cases.…

BY MARK ROWE
RUSSIA has tightened its meat import quotas for 2004 as part of a policy to cut food imports and encourage domestic livestock breeding. The Russian Meat Union said the approach had helped its poultry sector in 2003 and was being now being extended.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE JAPANESE government has lost its appeal against a World Trade Organisation (WTO) disputes panel ruling that had concluded the United States followed WTO rules when staging a sunset review of anti-dumping duties on Japan exports of corrosion-resistant carbon steel flat products.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FRAUD is centre stage again in European Union (EU) news, following a series of high profile scandals, for instance in Eurostat. Now OLAF, the EU’s anti-fraud agency has produced an annual report showing that it is detecting more irregularities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNATIONAL development consortium is to promote sustainable cocoa production systems in west Africa, to make supplies more predictable for processors and profitable for producers, easing the sector’s recent price squeeze. The partnership includes the United Nations Development Programme, Conservation International and the World Cocoa Foundation, which have been working with Mars, Hershey, Nestlé and the Alliance of Cocoa Producing Countries, among others.…