Search Results for: food

BY KEITH NUTHALL

ICELAND has negotiated a free trade deal with the EU covering a wide range of vegetables, sausages, reindeer meat, duty free wine (including fortified wines), mineral waters and other food and drink products, which will henceforth be traded duty free across the northern Atlantic.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health has approved mandatory counter testing for unauthorised GMOs in all imports of US long grain rice, after the European Commission and the US failed to agree a common sampling and testing protocol.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is pushing ahead with its reform programme following its appointment of Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle as executive director, making announcements on links with national food authorities and communication policy. EFSA and national agencies have signed a ‘declaration of intent’ committing them to drafting a detailed cooperation system by the New Year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN Union (EU) trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has been accused of stymieing the relaunch of the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round by rejecting an Australian compromise proposal. It has suggested the EU agrees cutting its average food tariffs by 5%; the US slashes US$5 billion from its food production subsidies; and developing countries also cut duties by 5%.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Las Vegas

LOCAL authorities in the UK are dipping their toes into the waters of improved environmental health in pubs and restaurants by publicising results of inspections in local papers. And for inspiration on tactics, they could do no better than look at the United States, where EHOs have named and shamed dirty restaurateurs for decades.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

FOOD consumers often do not understand the nutritional information given on packaging labels, according to a comprehensive US study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Vanderbilt University Medical Centre researchers have found that the reading and mathematical skills of a significant number of consumers may actually be insufficient to extract needed dietary information from labels.…

by Alan Osborn

The European Commission has requested eight EU member countries to trace contaminated meat which may have been imported from Germany. This follows the suicide of a Munich meat wholesaler after his business had been raided by police who found more than 60 tonnes of rotting meat awaiting delivery to purchasers in Germany and other EU countries.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

FOOD consumers often do not understand the nutritional information given on packaging labels, according to a comprehensive US study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Vanderbilt University Medical Centre researchers have found that the reading and mathematical skills of a significant number of consumers may actually be insufficient to extract needed dietary information from labels.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) has been directed to rule that pre-packaged food manufacturers share can with retailers and distributors the responsibility for ensuring products they handle are correctly labelled. In an Italian case involving supermarket Lidl, ECJ advocate general Christine Stix-Hackl has formally advised that EU directive 2000/13/EC on the labelling, presentation and advertising of foodstuffs does not mean "the obligations…are imposed only on the producer of a pre-packaged food product".…

BY MONICA DOBIE

CORNELL University researchers in the US have developed a new absorbent biodegradable wipe embedded with nanofibres containing antibodies that can quickly detect biohazards on any surface.

The cloth requires little training to use and is made of polyactide, a plastic polymer derived from corn that is inexpensive.…