Search Results for: food

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH the rulebook of the Kyoto Protocol all but written, the European Commission has been considering innovative ways in which it can help reduce the EU’s production of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Much emphasis has been made in the past on reducing industrial pollution or emissions from cars and lorries, but Brussels has now turned its attention to a source of the gases that is very much under the control of local authorities: waste disposal.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IRAQ’S petroleum revenues are surging again through the UN’s so-called oil-for-food programme, six months after a row over the future of the scheme had led to exports being suspended. As the scheme’s 11th phase started this month, (December), during the week ending December 7, Baghdad earned an estimated Euro110 million in revenue; the previous week, Iraq had earned Euro 334 million.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FATHER Christmas would have been appalled; European Commission officials have been censured for enjoying the hospitality of a Russian game exporter, which they subsequently granted permission to send reindeer meat to the European Union.

Jacob Söderman, the European Ombudsman has played Santa, ruling that these Eurocrats compromised themselves during a fact-finding mission to Russia, by allowing Sweden-based company Norrfrys Ab to lay on lunch, hotel and flight reservations, temporary fax facilities, interpretation services and inspection cars.…

BY KATE REW AND KEITH NUTHALL
DELAYS sparked by increased security following the September 11 attacks have been a boon for airport bars, says HMS Host, a US company managing food, drink and retail services at 65 domestic airports, which has said that its bar sales for 2001 will equal those in 2000, despite a drop of 28 per cent in passengers in September and October.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE NEW European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has now virtually completed its legislative journey through the EU institutions and is set to begin operations in the first half of next year though we’re still not sure where. Helsinki was the favourite for the seat until the Italian prime minister signor Berlusconi rudely pushed the claims of Parma, dismissing the Finns as “people who don’t know what prosciutto is.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A HOLISTIC global campaign against HIV/AIDS has been agreed by Rome-based UN agencies: the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the International Fund for Agriculture Development and the World Food Programme. The trio will work to minimise the effect on food production of AIDS epidemics in countries where the disease is particularly widespread, namely Cambodia, China, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has voted for the oncoming 2002-6 Euro 16.2 billion EU Sixth Framework Programme on research to fund studies on “all aspects of food safety in the food chain from primary production to food processing.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has again voted for a name change for the proposed European Food Authority, which will henceforth be known as the European Food Safety Authority, unless the EU Council of Ministers overturns the move. MEP’s also voted to streamline its management board and boost its democratic accountability, regarding public meetings and documents.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Food Authority should play a key role in seeking to allay the fears of European Union consumers about purchasing genetically modified foodstuffs, a senior official within the European Commission has claimed. The director general of the Commission’s directorate general for health and consumer protection, Robert Coleman, told a round table in Brussels that the unwillingness of EU consumers to buy GM food is because many are no longer “convinced by….…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Trade Organisation has agreed at its ministerial meeting in Qatar, to intensify its ongoing agriculture talks, which cover confectionary products; it was part of a decision to launch a general round of trade negotiations. Ministers established a deadline of the next WTO summit, (in 2003), for member governments to propose a complete list of formal concessions they are prepared to make on quotas, tariffs, subsidies and other trade barriers for food and drink goods.…