Search Results for: food

BY KEITH NUTHALL
COMMON EU technical rules for declaring information and making market approval applications for GM food products have been approved by the Council of Ministers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SERIES of good practice recommendations on the prevention and detection of e-coli outbreaks has been issued by the European Commission, following a study of how six EU Member States deal with the pathogen.

Officials looked at the monitoring and control systems for red meat and milk in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Portugal and Sweden and concluded that although all were alert to the risks of e-coli contamination, there was a wide range of different public and private control measures.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has formally established the European Food Safety Authority, along with the set of EU regulations that it is supposed to police. Ministers confirmed that the new agency would be established temporarily in Brussels, as Member States have been unable to agree the location of its permanent home.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GLOBAL Forum on Food Safety Regulators has been staged by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, (FAO), and the World Health Organisation, 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 KEITH NUTHALL
THE GLOBAL Partnership to Eliminate Riverblindness has announced that US$39 million has been pledged by its members to wipe out Onchocerciasis, (Riverblindness), in the whole of Africa by 2010. The group includes the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the US Agency for International Development and 30 African countries, along with private pharmaceutical companies, (including Merck).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH formal approval being secured for the launch of the European Food Safety Authority, the European Commission has promised to work swiftly so that the new body can be operational by the end of this year in its temporary home in Evere, north Brussels.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WHAT could be more straightforward or fairer, you might think, than the European Union’s veterinary and phytosanitary agreements with non-member countries?

The idea is that each party pledges that the food it exports to the other – be it derived from animals or plants – meets the requirements of its own food safety legislation and that this is then taken on trust by the receiving country.…

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
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
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.…