Search Results for: food

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE PRICE of sugar bought by EU food and drinks producers is to fall, following an agreement at the Council of Ministers on reducing EU sugar production subsidies by 36% over 4 years, with farmers compensated by payments independent of production representing 64.2% of the price cut on average.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

TRADE ministers at the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Hong Kong summit are struggling today to reach a compromise deal on the vexed question of cotton subsidies that will prevent west African exporters scuppering an overall agreement. The United States has been under pressure to abandon its production payments to American growers, which are highly politically sensitive in the US.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is lending US$2.5 million to Kazakhstan’s Bericap Kazakhstan LLC to construct a new factory making plastic food container tops (or closures) for local and other central Asian markets. Part of the German plastic container company, the Bericap Holding Group, the Kazakhstan business plans to build purpose-built production facilities, allowing it to relocate its operations, optimising costs; providing space for future expansion; and improving environmental plus health and safety management.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed a series of zero-duty import quotas for a wide range of food products for which there is demand within the European Union (EU), but where local production is either weak or non-existent. Assuming they are approved by the EU Council of Ministers, three-year (almost entirely) duty free quotas, unlimited in scope, will be opened for 30 food products, ranging from crab and bamboo shoots to noodles and pineapples.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DECEMBER 2005’s semi-successful World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Hong Kong means that the sacrifice forced upon the European Union’s (EU) well protected sugar sector the month before will – largely – be worth the pain. Unlike the previous big WTO meeting, in Cancun, Mexico, trade ministers did not leave in rancour having achieved little.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

HIGHLY undiplomatic exchanges between the European Union (EU) and the United States over the vexed question of cotton subsidies have threatened to obstruct agreement at the already tough parallel talks on general agricultural liberalisation at the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Hong Kong summit.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

TRADE ministers meeting at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Hong Kong last night (Sunday) set a tight timetable for agreeing of the Doha Development Round’s overall goals on agricultural liberalisation, saying these long discussed ‘modalities’ must be approved by April 30.…

BY MARK ROWE AND PAUL COCHRANE

INTRODUCTION

JUST as chocolate sells well in cold countries, so do soft drinks flourish in hot countries, which would suggest that North Africa and the Levant presents an inviting face to the international drinks market.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Medicines Evaluation Agency (EMEA) has launched a safety review of the drug Tamiflu, seen as the front-line defence against any bird flu outbreak in humans. It has asked manufacturer Roche to check "all available data on serious psychiatric disorders, including all case reports with a fatal outcome where Tamiflu was involved".…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Medicines Evaluation Agency (EMEA) has launched a safety review of the drug Tamiflu, seen as the front-line defence against any bird flu outbreak in humans. It has asked manufacturer Roche to check “all available data on serious psychiatric disorders, including all case reports with a fatal outcome where Tamiflu was involved”.…