Search Results for: food

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MEMBERS of the European Parliament have proposed changing the name of the nascent European Food Authority, to make it a European Food Safety Authority. The proposal is one of 200 amendments agreed by the parliament’s environment committee for approval by a later plenary session.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GLOBAL Forum on Food Safety Regulators is to be staged by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation and the World Health Organisation in October, reflecting concern about recent food safety incidents, such as BSE, that the FAO claims have “caused serious turmoil in the world food markets and raised concern among consumers.”…

BY MONICA DOBIE
AMERICAN meat processor Sara Lee’s guilty plea to a federal misdemeanor of making and distributing contaminated meats that were associated with 15 deaths and led to a settlement including a US$200,000 fine and to give US$3 million to fund food safety research at Michigan State University.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FARMERS and food industry cooperatives have been encouraged by the European Commission to use the Internet as a way of improving communications with fellow producers, processors, distributors and customers.

Speaking to the Praesidium of EU cooperative movement COGECA, information society commissioner Erkki Liikanen urged these rural industries not to miss out on the opportunities offered by the development of e-commerce technologies.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A MAJOR extension of the powers of the European Medicines Evaluation Agency (EMEA) has been proposed by the European Commission as part of a sweeping reform of EU pharmaceutical legislation. At present the EMEA authorises only the use of high profile medicines derived from biotechnology, such as those used for cancer, AIDS, multiple schlerosis and Alzheimers disease among others.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A LACK of coordination amongst EU Member States’ research teams regarding the study of BSE has been revealed by a new European inventory of previous work and that in progress, collated by the European Commission.

It has highlighted areas where better links between national research programmes is required.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKE
THE HIGH production cost of sugar within India is a major stumbling block to the export of an existing large surplus, the country’s Minister of Food and Civil Supplies, Shanta Kumar has said at a press conference.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has agreed reforms to EU rules on pig welfare. They now ban the confinement of pregnant pigs to individual stalls and tethering of sows and gilts. The amended directive also includes rules on improving the living environment of pigs and piglets, such as a minimum size of sow pens, and requires permanent access to rooting materials and fibre food.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRUSSELS is always looking for big ideas by which it can justify its existence to a doubting public and one of the latest of these is the concept of a European Research Area. This idea is that Europe – with its patchwork of nations and national research units – should coordinate its academics and researchers, making sure that they do not duplicate their efforts, rather dovetailing them with a single European goal in mind.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has unveiled a series of new proposals that it intends to make in the latter half of this year, during the Belgian presidency of the European Union. In a statement issued by the Directorate General for Health and Consumer Protection, officials have that they intend to follow up the White Paper on Food Safety, issued in January 2000, with formal proposals including:

*A revision of the directive on the control of foot-and-mouth disease, drawing on the experience of the recent outbreak;

*Amendments for a revised directive on livestock and poultry diseases, including measures to control salmonella;

*A new regulation harmonising and reinforcing official controls on food and animal feed;

*Plans to phase out the use of four remaining antibiotics authorised for use in feed and fodder;

*A strategy to reduce the presence of dioxin in feed and food.…