Search Results for: food

BY KEITH NUTHALL
*A strictly Stalinist approach to fighting bird flu, has led to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) noting North Korea has controlled its outbreak. Around 218,000 chickens on three infected farms have been killed by Dear Leader Kim Jong Il’s bird flu clean up squads, while vaccinations and movement controls have prevented further outbreaks.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has released rulings on market approval applications for plastic materials used for packaging in contact with food and drink. Its concern is to ensure compliance with directive 89/109/EEC on ‘materials and articles intended to come into contact with foodstuffs’, which aims to prevent harmful contamination.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has released guidelines on improving the detection of Taenia saginata cysticercosis infection in veal calves. It said existing post-mortem checks could not guarantee calves are free of the parasite, because of their “low sensitivity”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has indicated a fresh flexibility in protecting European food production to secure agreement at the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round. She said she would accept a “new blue box definition”, scrapping some key European Union’s subsidies designed to reduce production.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SUDDENLY accountants are being held in unusually high esteem and it’s all because of their work in connection with the relief effort for victims of the Boxing Day tsunami. To date some Pounds 4.7 billion for the stricken countries has been raised worldwide but nothing like that sum has yet got through to the people affected; some of it stolen perhaps and some of it wasted, but a lot of it bogged down in inadequate financial infrastructures: step forward the big multinational accountancy firms who have provided staff, management and professional advice and training, a good deal of it on a pro bono publico basis.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched a Euro 1.01 million research project aimed at developing guidelines for boosting the nutrition of elderly people, improving their general health and well-being. Researchers in the NUTRI-SENEX scheme will consider ways of dealing with the loss of smell and taste in older people, which can spark a loss of appetite, leading to weight loss and other health problems.…

BY RICHARD HURST
THE SOUTH African paint and coatings industry is in a state of change as a shift in focus towards overseas markets coupled with a need to protect local markets is pushing manufacturers to reassess their quality and production volume capabilities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EFSA has advised food businesses to assess their good hygienic and manufacturing practices to ensure they minimise risks posed by the anaerobic spore-forming bacteria clostridium, which can cause botulism. EFSA has advised on recipe formulation, heating plus storage temperature and duration.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EFSA is publicly consulting national risk assessment specialists on how to check dangers posed by jointly genotoxic and carcinogenic compounds used in food. Methods vary across Europe, producing contrasting advice. EFSA wants a pan-EU “harmonised, scientific and transparent approach”.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
NURSES caring for the elderly and the infirm are to receive help from a Euro 1 million research programme funded by the European Commission that will focus on ways to improve their patients’ nutrition. The NUTRI-SENEX multi-national initiative marks the first project of its kind to link experts in the care, dietary and teaching professions in different EU countries “to produce recommendations, survey health legislation and develop guidelines for functional and nutritionally-balanced food for the elderly.”…