Search Results for: food

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commissions rapid alert system for food and feed (RASFF) has warned of sales in the Czech Republic of Spanish fruit flavour confectionary containing excess colouring E124 and in Austria of foods containing unauthorised Indian ingredient betel nuts.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

FOOD producers and distributors in Vietnam are to receive assistance in raising their standards via Euro 38 million lent by the European Investment Bank (EIB) to Germany’s Metro Cash and Carry Vietnam Limited. This money will also help finance the construction of stores in Can Tho, Ho-Chi-Minh-City, Hanoi, Haiphong and Da Nang.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE PARALLEL production of genetically modified and non-GM food is practical without major precautions, claims a report from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC). The European Union (EU) scientific unit says that accidental contamination of non-GM seeds with genetically modified material can be limited to 0.5% with no changes in production methods for sugar beet (and cotton) and small changes in maize husbandry.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has unveiled imminent plans to abolish the European Union (EU) system of pre-financing export refunds for food, widely used in the past to manipulate EU beef sales. Because of this, EU agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer-Boel has told the EU Council of Ministers that the system would be replaced with direct beef export controls.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE CURRENT European Union (EU) president Austria is staging a debate at Thursday’s (9-3) EU Council of Ministers to try and tighten EU controls on approving GM food products. Because of a deadlock amongst member states, the European Commission has been authorising GM market approvals, upsetting countries such as Austria, which oppose such permissions.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE, in Sydney

NON-metallic minerals, long considered the poor relations in the extended family of industrial minerals, are suddenly popular again.

They have found favour once more because of their molecular structures and their usefulness in the rapidly advancing world of nanotechnology.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

CEREAL production and prices in the European Union (EU) both slumped in 2005, compared with 2004, according to the latest food market figures from EU statistical agency Eurostat. Faced with a bumper harvest in 2004, producers struggled to secure good prices, even by cutting back on production, a process aided by poor weather.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

DEBATES are continuing in European Union (EU) institutions over whether general vaccination is a safe response to Europe’s growing bird flu problem. With Germany, France, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Greece, Switzerland, Slovenia, Italy all reporting new cases, the EU’s Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health has approved the first vaccination campaigns.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has recommended that although there is no evidence that humans can catch bird flu by eating contaminated poultry meat or eggs, such foods should be properly cooked to defend against a hypothetical risk.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

TRADITIONAL food and drink suppliers from non-European Union (EU) countries will be able to apply for protection of their geography-linked named in EU markets under reforms approved by the EU Council of Ministers. Following a World Trade Organisation case, which found the EU discriminating against the registration of non-EU traditional food and drink terms, ministers passed two reforms: they deleted a requirement that similar protection should be offered to EU food and drink producers in the exporter’s home market; and also agreed that applications could be made direct to the European Commission, rather than via their governments.…