Europe Agri articles from March 2008

Europe Agri archives from March 2008

ACQUISITION OF INALCA APPROVED.
March 14, 2008... The European Commission granted clearance, on 26 February, to the acquisition of joint control of Inalca SpA of Italy by JBS SA of Brazil and Cremonini SpA of Italy. JBS and Inalca both manufacture and sell fresh and processed meat. Cremonini...

ENERGY COUNCIL : AD HOC WORKING GROUP TO ELABORATE ON BIOFUELS' SUSTAINABILITY.
March 14, 2008... At their meeting on 28 February, the EU's energy ministers gave their go-ahead for an ad-hoc working group to draw up core sustainability criteria for biofuels "within a strict time frame". Work will start immediately. The basis for the group's...

ANDROULA VASSILIOU BEFORE THE EP ON 1 APRIL.(Brief article)
March 14, 2008... The new EU Health Commissioner, Androula Vassiliou, who will replace the Cypriot Markos Kyprianou, took office on 3 March, according to a spokesperson from the EU executive. The Council approved this appointment on 29 February. However, the...

BEVERAGE INDUSTRY : CARLSBERG CLEARED TO BUY ASSETS OF SCOTTISH & NEWCASTLE.
March 14, 2008... The European Commission cleared, on 7 March, the acquisition by the Danish company Carlsberg of certain assets of the brewer Scottish & Newcastle (S&N), a public company with interests in the production and distribution of beer (including...

ANIMAL HEALTH : COMMISSION TO FUND BLUETONGUE VACCINATION CAMPAIGN.
March 14, 2008... The European Commission is going to allocate 72 million for the vaccination campaign aimed at stopping the spread of bluetongue (also know as catarrhal fever) in the EU. This measure received the support of the Standing Committee on the Food...

FEED : COMMISSION TO SIMPLIFY ANIMAL FEED LABELLING RULES.
March 14, 2008... The European Commission proposed, on 4 March, a simplification of rules for the marketing of feed for domestic animals and breeding stock, resuming in just one document several regulations and directives adopted over recent years. Besides the...

COMMON POSITIONS ON FOOD ADDITIVES.
March 14, 2008... The EU Council formally adopted, on 10 March in Brussels, at first reading, four common positions on four closely linked dossiers on enzymes, food additives and aromas: a regulation aiming to evaluate and authorise these foodstuffs uniformly at...

BIOFUELS : EP DEBATES SUSTAINABILITY CRITERIA FOR BIOFUELS.
March 14, 2008... During a hearing on the environmental sustainability criteria for biofuels at the European Parliament, on 4 March, several experts disputed the EU objective of a 10% volume of biofuels by 2020. They believe it would be wiser to express the...

INTERVIEW WITH VASSILIS SPILIOPOULOS, PRESIDENT, EUROPEAN UNION OF ETHANOL PRODUCERS : "EU CAN HAVE 11% SUSTAINABLE BIOFUELS BY 2020 WITHOUT IMPORTS".
March 14, 2008... Vassilis Spiliopoulos has been an ethanol producer since 1970 in Greece. He is the current president of the European Union of Ethanol Producers (UEPA) and also vice-president of the Federation of Greek Industries. What exactly do the...

DOHA ROUND : EU URGES EMERGING COUNTRIES TO MAKE CONCESSIONS.
March 14, 2008... The EU's member states urged emerging countries to make concessions in the Doha Round and gave a cautious backing to Peter Mandelson, ahead of decisive talks in the coming weeks, on 10 March, in Brussels. While the most free trade-oriented...

CAP HEALTH CHECK : FISCHER BOEL'S SERVICES PRESENT LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS.
March 14, 2008... The services of Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel have developed legislative proposals for the Common Agricultural Policy health check'. The European Commission will submit these proposals to the Union's agriculture ministers on 20...

GMOS : FRANCE RE-OPENS DEBATE AT ENVIRONMENT COUNCIL.(genetically modified organisms)(Brief article)
March 14, 2008... The matter of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) was not officially on the agenda of the meeting of EU environment ministers on 3 March, but Paris forced its partners' hand by presenting a working paper aimed at re-opening the debate, in...

GERMAN AID FOR HORTICULTURE.
March 14, 2008... The European Commission decided, on 11 March, that the tax refund scheme for German greenhouses is compatible with Community guidelines on state aid for environmental protection. A part of the tax reductions could not be justified, however, and...

BREEDING : GUIDELINES TO CONFRONT DECLINE IN SHEEP AND GOAT BREEDING.
March 14, 2008... Faced with the decline in sheep and goat breeding in the Union, a study, presented on 26 February by the Agriculture Committee of the European Parliament, puts forward a series of measures to give confidence back to producers and allow...

NOVEL FOODS : MEPS CALL FOR MORATORIUM ON CLONING.
March 14, 2008... Seventeen of the twenty-four members of the European Parliament's intergroup dedicated to animal well-being gave their support to a draft resolution aiming to ban the use of cloning in Europe. Given the high mortality rate of cloned animals and...

WINE : OVER 100,000 HA OF VINEYARD INELIGIBLE FOR GRUBBING PROGRAMME.
March 14, 2008... The proportion of vineyard in the European Union declared ineligible for the grubbing [uprooting] programme will be established at 102,877 hectares. The distribution of surface area per member states will be taken up in the overall compromise...

EU/ACP/WTO : SUGAR INDUSTRIES IN DOHA ALERT.
March 14, 2008... European and ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) sugar industries are worried that the EU might sign up to a Doha deal that would drastically reduce their tariff protections and put in jeopardy previously agreed restructuring programmes. The...

STATISTICS : UNION'S AGRICULTURAL INCOME AND PRODUCTION UP IN 2007.
March 14, 2008... In the European Union, real agricultural income per worker(1) rose by 5.4% in 2007, after increasing by 3.3% in 2006. This increase was the result of a growth in real agricultural income (+3.1%) and a reduction in agricultural labour input...

WARNING OVER BIOFUELS.
March 14, 2008... The increased use of biofuels is detrimental to the fight against hunger across the world, the EU was told by the chief of the World Food Programme (WFP) when she visited the European Parliament, on 6 March in Brussels. Josette Sheeran, the...

EU/CROATIA : ZAGREB COULD SUSPEND ECOLOGICAL ZONE TO SALVAGE EU BID.
March 14, 2008... In a bid to unblock Croatia's EU accession negotiations, the ruling Democratic Union (HDZ), led by Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, is intent on suspending the application of the Ecological and Fisheries Protection Zone (ZERP) in the Adriatic to the...

EU/HORN OF AFRICA : 30 MN EURO IN AID TO IMPROVE DROUGHT PREPAREDNESS.
March 28, 2008... The European Commission is providing 30 million in humanitarian aid to improve drought preparedness in the Greater Horn of Africa. The action plan, announced on 17 March, concerns in particular nomadic and semi-nomadic pastoralists in seven...

EU/MAURITANIA : AGREEMENT ON FISHING EFFORT AND EU FINANCING.
March 28, 2008... The new protocol to the Fisheries Partnership Agreement, initialled on 14 March by the EU and Mauritania, aims to improve on the previous text in meeting Mauritania's needs in terms of sustainable development of its fisheries sector. It takes...

AID SCHEME FOR LINEN AND HEMP.(European Union. European Commission)(European Union. European Parliament)(Brief article)
March 28, 2008... The European Parliament adopted, on 11 March, the consultative report by Neil Parish (EPP-ED, UK), which approves the extension of the aid scheme for the linen and hemp sector for the 2008-2009 marketing year, proposed by the European...

AUSTRALIA : AUSTRALIAN AGRICULTURE DECLARES WAR ON CLIMATE CHANGE.
March 28, 2008... After seven years of serious drought and with a new government in place, Australia has stopped denying the reality of climate change. The new centre-left government in office since December of last year is convinced that "if we don't take...

AGRICULTURE COUNCIL : BALANCED CONCLUSIONS ON CAP HEALTH CHECK.
March 28, 2008... The Slovenian EU Presidency succeeded in having balanced' conclusions adopted by the Agriculture Council of 17 March. These conclusions satisfy most member states; only the Czech and Latvian delegations abstained. "It certainly is not a...

EU/US : COMMISSION IN BID TO STOP NEW TAX ON DAIRY EXPORTS.
March 28, 2008... With the US Congress and Senate in the final stages of negotiating the Farm Bill, the European Commission is making a last-ditch effort to prevent EU dairy exports having a new tax imposed on them. The EU's Ambassador in Washington, John...

BIOTECHNOLOGY : COMMISSION TO AUTHORISE IMPORT OF GA21 TRANSGENIC MAIZE.
March 28, 2008... Less than a year after Syngenta submitted a request for authorisation to the European Commission, barely seven months after the positive opinion by the European Food Safety Authority and just three months after the inconclusive vote by the...

BIOFUELS : COMMISSION TO CANCEL ENERGY CROP AID.
March 28, 2008... At the 2008 World Biofuels Markets Congress in Brussels, on 13 March, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Mariann Fischer Boel said she would abolish the energy crop aid of 45 per hectare currently offered by the Common...

EU/UNITED STATES : EUROPEAN COMMISSION DIVIDED OVER CHLORINATED CHICKEN.
March 28, 2008... Should Europe give in to the incredible pressure being put on it by the United States and open the EU's doors to American chicken that has been sanitised with a chlorine-based solution? EU Enterprise Commissioner Gunter Verheugen has chosen the...

CAP REFORM : EUROPEANS DEFEND BASIC AIMS OF FARM POLICY.
March 28, 2008... For European citizens, the top priority of the Common Agricultural Policy is to guarantee reasonable food prices, according to a survey carried out on behalf of the European Commission(1). This view, expressed by 43% of those polled by TNS...

EU-RUSSIA MEMORANDUM ON TRADE IN PLANT PRODUCTS.
March 28, 2008... Following months of difficult negotiations, the European Commission and Russia signed, on 26 March, a memorandum on the safety of plant products for human consumption that "is expected to facilitate dialogue between the two sides" on concerns...

FISHERIES POLICY : FRANCE ORDERED TO STOP DRIFTNET FISHING.
March 28, 2008... For the marine conservation organisation, Oceana, the ruling handed down on 28 February by the EU Court of Justice (Case C-479/07R) is a first victory since the judges in Luxembourg rejected the application for interim measures lodged by Paris...

FOODSTUFFS : FREE FOOD SCHEME FOR EUROPE'S POOR.(European Union. European Commission)(Brief article)
March 28, 2008... The European programme for the distribution of free food to people in need in the Community will have to be modified. It was originally based on European intervention stocks, but with the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, these stocks...

BIODIVERSITY : HUMAN ACTIVITY SERIOUS THREAT TO MEDITERRANEAN REGION.
March 28, 2008... Out of the 25,000 known Mediterranean plant species (9.2% of the world's identified species on a territory representing just 1.5% of the planet's surface), half are particularly well adapted notably to dry periods and are not found anywhere...

ITALIAN AID FOR BIODIESEL AUTHORISED.
March 28, 2008... The European Commission authorised, on 12 March, a tax reduction granted by Italian public authorities to stimulate the production and use of biodiesel (an annual quota of 250,000 tonnes of biodiesel would benefit from an excise duty rate of...

LULA CRITICISES IMPORT TAXES ON ETHANOL.
March 28, 2008... Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has strongly criticised developed countries which impose import taxes on Brazilian ethanol made from sugar cane. "The USA and Europe do not levy import taxes on petrol, which is a pollutant, but they...

DAIRY PRODUCTS : MEMBER STATES CONFIRM 2% INCREASE IN MILK QUOTAS.
March 28, 2008... Despite opposition from Germany and Austria and the abstention of France, the EU's agriculture ministers decided, on 17 March, to increase milk quotas by 2% beginning on 1 April 2008 to meet growing demand. The increase represents a total of...

CAP : MEPS APPLY CAUTION TO HEALTH CHECK'.(common agricultural policy)(European Union. European Parliament)
March 28, 2008... The Common Agricultural Policy health check' should not further reduce the funding available to farmers, nor should it apply discriminatory capping to direct aid. Account must also be taken of the special needs of regions in difficulty and of...

CAP HEALTH CHECK : MINISTERS SCALE BACK COMMISSION'S AMBITIONS.(common agricultural policy)(European Union. European Commission)
March 28, 2008... The EU's agriculture ministers adopted conclusions on the Common Agricultural Policy health check' guidelines when they met in Council, on 17 March in Brussels. On certain key issues, they urged the European Commission to be cautious in the...

FISHERIES POLICY : NEW GUIDELINES ON STATE AID.
March 28, 2008... New guidelines on state aid to the fisheries sector(1) will be in force from 1 April 2008. Adopted on 12 March by the European Commission, the new guidelines update the rules in force since 2004 and aim to guarantee full compliance with the...

EU/GUINEA-BISSAU/IVORY COAST : PARLIAMENT APPROVES FISHERIES PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENTS.
March 28, 2008... The fisheries partnership agreements between the EU on the one hand, and Guinea-Bissau and the Ivory Coast on the other, will be renewed together with their revised protocols. However, the European Parliament, which on 12 March endorsed both...

AGRICULTURAL AIDS : TRANSPARENCY TO BE THE RULE ON FARM AID.
March 28, 2008... By 30 April 2009, all European Union member states will have to set up a web site publishing detailed information on the beneficiaries of the Common Agricultural Policy. The full name, municipality and postal code of every beneficiary will have...