Search Results for: food

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A PLANNED forced merger of the carton packaging businesses of Norway Elopak and Switzerland’s SIG has been abandoned, after the European Commission opened a detailed competition inquiry. Brussels has acknowledged the deal has collapsed, with a public tender offer for SIG shares by Elopak owner Ferd and Luxembourg-based investment fund CVC failing.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are researching the genes of black Bengal dwarf goats, a key leather livestock in Bangladesh, to improve breeding techniques and the species’ health.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union (EU) research project says it has used cutting edge technology to manipulate nano-clay particles to develop a bio-polymer based food packaging, replacing materials based on petrochemical polymers, reducing pollution and demand for mineral oils. Professor Chris Breen of Sheffield Hallam University, a member of the EU SUSTAINPACK project, said his team was incorporating tiny nano-clay particles in biopolymer films to make them as water resistant as standard polymer packaging.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
ETHICALLY conscious consumers are spending more money on buying certified fair trade wine, although the marketing of other drinks certified to promote social development in poorer countries has been slower to grow.

Fair trade wines volumes are now respectable, with the London-based Fair Trade Foundation saying consumption is highest in the UK, with worldwide sales volumes totaling 618,000 litres in 2004 (bought entirely in Britain), and 1.39 million in 2005, with Britons buying 1.12 million of the share.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has unveiled further data underlining the risk to human health posed by widespread contamination of broiler chicken flocks across Europe with the pathogen salmonella. In its latest figures, which back earlier alarming data about salmonella contamination within egg production systems, EFSA said that in 2005-6, almost a quarter – 23.7% – of EU broiler (meat) flocks were contaminated with salmonella.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) Joint Research Centre (JRC) is opening three new reference laboratories this month (March 17) to monitor reliable testing of contaminated food items and animal feed. The new laboratories, at Geel, in Belgium, will test for heavy metals, mycotoxins and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), all key food health concerns.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) food and drink manufacturers association CIAA is calling on the European Commission to delay proposing planned reforms to European Union (EU) nutritional information legislation, allowing the CIAA’s voluntary scheme time to bed in.

Commission officials are considering changes to EU regulation EC/90/496, which covers the tables of nutritional information on packets, (not nutritional claims covered by separate proposed EU legislation, now under discussion).…

BY MONICA DOBIE
RESEARCHERS from Yale University in the USA investigating how bacteria ‘swim’ in fluids have determined that a bacteria’s swimming strokes pattern is linked to the high infection rates associated with catheters in hospital patients.

According to a study in Physical Review Letters, E coli bacteria and other pathogens swimming with flagella or tails move straight ahead when not faced with obstructions, but near a surface or obstacle the bacteria “swim to the left” often getting stuck in minute crevices in the process, such as those on the surface of catheters.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has concluded that the current tough European Union (EU) safety limit for aflatoxins in processed almonds, hazelnuts and pistachios can be raised from its 4 µg/kg cap. Aflatoxin contamination causes cancer, experts fear.…

BY JULIAN RYALL, in Tokyo
TASTES and trends come and go in cosmetics sectors, but the Japanese cosmetics market is arguably the most volatile of them all. With as many as 1,000 companies vying for a slice of the action – ranging from domestic names that have projected themselves around the world to foreign corporations bringing the chic of Paris or New York and small-scale specialists – the personal care products industry here needs to be constantly evolving.…