Search Results for: food

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BELGIAN fast food firm Quick has defeated at the European Court of Justice an attempt by Nestlé to secure European Union trademark rights to the brand ‘Quickies’ for confectionary, chocolate and sugar.

ENDS…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission’s Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM) and Belgium’s Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO) have agreed to cooperate on food and feed safety research, collating data, helping to plan EU food safety and quality programmes.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has unveiled imminent plans to abolish the European Union (EU) system of pre-financing export refunds for food, a complex subsidy that has been criticised by the EU financial watchdog, the Court of Auditors. Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer-Boel said that the system would be replaced with direct controls on beef exports, which the refund pre-financing has encouraged in the past.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced its latest tranche of subsidies to European Union (EU) food and drink producer organisations paying for non-EU sales promotion. They cover Euro 1.7 million on Spanish cheese, Euro 420,000 on Italian cheese and Euro 787,000 on Greek olives, amongst other products.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

INTRODUCTION

THE WORLD’S multilateral food trading system today stands at a crossroads: faced with the suspension of the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round, it can either retreat to protectionism, leavened by a series of competitive bilateral trade deals, or it can grasp the nettle of liberal free trade, slash subsidies and tariffs, and then watch the economic rewards roll in.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Parliament environment committee has pushed for food businesses to be freed of tough authorisation procedures for health claims proposed by the European Commission, where they do not involve protecting consumers against illness. In amendments approved yesterday (22-3) in its second reading of a planned European Union (EU) regulation on food nutrients, the committee said "a quicker and more flexible registration procedure" than originally proposed should apply for these statements.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

The European Parliament has voted to tighten legislation covering the labelling of food products in the EU in order to give greater protection to European producers of regional specialities and traditional food like Roquefort cheese. MEPs approved European Commission proposals to amend regulations applying to PDOs (protected designation of origin) PGIs (protected geographical indication) and TSGs (traditional speciality guaranteed) following a demand from the WTO for the EU to improve access by non-EU nationals to the protected label system.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

DEBATES are continuing within EU institutions over whether vaccination is a safe response to bird flu. The EU’s standing committee on the food chain and animal health has approved limited vaccination in France and the Netherlands. But this was resisted by Austria, Denmark, Germany and Portugal, who fear vaccination’s potential cost, damage to consumer confidence and resulting overseas import bans.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

AFRICA’S tobacco leaf producers are facing troubled times.

Instead of capitalising on crop and currency woes in rival Brazil, too many producers across the world’s poorest continent are battling drought and low selling prices.

Brazil’s problems should have opened a door of opportunity for leading African producers to claim back at least part of the world leaf market lost to south American and other producers when Zimbabwe’s crop collapsed amid the violent seizure of white-owned farm land.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

Cyprus has been told by the European Commission it will be barred from displaying GM food separately from non-GM food in supermarkets. Cyprus informed Brussels last September that under Article 95(5) of the EU Treaty, allowing divergence from EU harmonisation measures under certain conditions, they would force supermarkets to place GM foods on separate, designated shelves.…