Search Results for: food

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITAIN’S performance in reducing heart disease deaths could be much improved compared with many of its European Union (EU) partners, a new World Health Organisation heart disease atlas, has shown.

Dividing a country’s annual deaths from heart disease with its population, saturated fats and beer loving Britain had a comparative factor of 2, based on 120,530 deaths in 2002 amongst a population of 59 million.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN food industry has been asked to supply information to an official European Food Safety Authority inquiry aimed at discovering products most prone to contain the carcinogen furan.…

BY MONICA DOBIE and KEITH NUTHALL
USA retail food product sizes are outstripping weights declared on their labels by as much as 72%, according to a new study published by the American Dietetic Association.

Researchers from the US Agricultural Research Service (ARS) found that out of 99 food items checked, just 37 had contents weighing what was declared on their labels, 15 were underweight, and 47 products were oversized.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INCOMING European Commissioner for health and consumer affairs has committed himself to comprehensively overhauling the European Union’s (EU) consumer protection legislation, to kick start Europe’s sluggish cross-border shopping market. Answering a European Parliament questionnaire ahead of assuming office in November, Cyprus’ Markos Kyprianou said the current laws were a “patchwork”, creating a minimalist safety net of common European rights that failed to inspire confidence.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A NEW EU food safety advisory body has been set up by the European Commission; the Advisory Group on the Food Chain and Animal and Plant Health will including in its membership the food production and processing industries, retailers and farmers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INCOMING European Commissioner for health and consumer affairs has shown signs in a European Parliament questionnaire that he could be as feisty as his predecessor, Ireland’s David Byrne, calling for an EU-wide ban on smoking in public.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has released open-use software GeoNetwork helping developing countries manage geographical, climatic and population data vital for monitoring food production and distribution. It overlays map data from different institutions on vegetation density, soil quality, rivers, population density, water reservoirs, food distribution points and other issues.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AMERICAN and European Union (EU) officials are trying to devise a common approach to implementing Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points food safety principles. Both sides staged a technical seminar in Ireland last week (Sept 16-17) at the EU Food and Veterinary Office (FVO).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN governments should exploit the scare tactics of the 1980’s when AIDS campaigns shocked promiscuous sex devotees and intravenous drug users into changing their behaviour, stemming HIV infections, the World Health Organisation has claimed. It fears dramatic increases in HIV cases in eastern Europe that are amongst the world’s worst, notably in Estonia, Latvia, Russia and the Ukraine “where the epidemic continues to spread unchecked”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has added seven traditional food products to the EU register of protected geographical indications: Spanish beef Ternera de Navarre, Carne de Vacuno del País Vasco and Carne de Cantabria and veal Carne de la Sierra de Guadarrama, Portuguese sausages Farinheira de Estremoz e Borba, Italian Kiwi fruits Latina and Valle del Belice and France’s Noix du Périgord nuts.…