Search Results for: food

BY PHILIP FINE

THE U.S. Department of Agriculture has picked the organisations that will put seals of approval on American organic practices, farms and distributors and the products that they sell. In the department’s goal of coming up with a national ‘organic’ definition, all of the country’s agricultural products labelled organic must, by this autumn, originate from farms or handling operations certified by a

USDA-accredited agency.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CRIMINALS dream of a world without police and although such a concept might seem science-fiction, it is actually easy to commit offences away from the eyes of law enforcement: just hire a boat. On the high seas, there is no-one watching, which is why fishing crime is so common and difficult to detect.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s fish processing industry should become an integral concern of the EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), a European Parliament report has claimed, with Member States being directed to encourage its companies to become financially independent. MEP’s have voted to accept the report by German Christian Democrat Brigitte Langenhagen who said that state aid should only be paid out to processors in underdeveloped regions “which heavily depend on fisheries.”…

BY MONICA DOBIE
ASK most people what they do with maple syrup and the majority will reply they use it to drizzle over pancakes in the morning. Maple syrup producers in Quebec, the world’s leading producer of the sweet treat, are trying to change that.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UN Food and Agricultural Organisation and the UN Conference on Trade and Development are developing a task force helping developing countries establish administrative regimes guarantee that locally produced organic foods were made without artificial aids. UNCTAD promotes organic production as sustainable, because its labour intensity and lack of expensive chemical inputs matches poor countries’ economic realities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INDIAN government is planning to set up 27 so-called ‘food parks,’ dedicated industrial estates for food processing industries.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IN an interesting recent analysis of the problems facing livestock and other food producers in Europe, the European Union agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler suggested that one way forward could be through contract farming.

Instead of producing in the traditional way for the open market, he said, producers might consider linking with retail groups or the meat processing industry and delivering precisely what was needed in terms of both quality and quantity.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SOME sensible words were spoken recently by the EU’s agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler on the way forward for farmers. His starting point was the quality of farm produce. Noone is going to say that quality has ever been far from farmers’ minds, but until recently it wasn’t really the first consideration.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has passed the proposed directive on food supplements, clearing the way for the final adoption of the new EU-wide rules which harmonise the national rules on the sale of pills and capsules, Including labeling) and safety rules for supplements containing vitamins and minerals.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ALMOST all eastern European countries applying to join the EU have asked for special transitional periods averaging three years to raise health standards at some of their food processing plants to meet EU regulations. Products from plants where improvements are still being made will not be able to circulate the EU.…