Tag: Food

In a drive to limit future food price hikes, the European Commission is calling on national authorities to keep an eye out for potential unfair commercial practices in the food sector which may be holding back competition and consumer protection.

"The time has come for Europe to take the lead by introducing collective international action and regulation" to tackle the food crisis, argues French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier in the autumn edition of Europe's World.

The European Commission has launched a public consultation on how European farmers can improve the quality of their food and drink to achieve the added value needed to compete with much lower production costs in emerging countries.

The vast majority of European citizens have a general negative perception of animal cloning for food production, saying that too little is known of its long-term health and safety effects, according to an EU-wide poll presented yesterday (9 October) by the European Commission.

A public hearing in the European Parliament on 28 August 2008 saw food industry stakeholders hit out against Commission proposals on nutrition labelling, which they say are overly complex and will push up costs for small businesses.

Following a major increase in cereal prices over the past year, the current global environment indicates that "the era of cheap food is over," write Juan Delgado and Indhira Santos in a July policy brief for the Bruegel think tank.

As leaders of the world's richest countries gather at the G8 summit in Japan to discuss soaring food prices, a UK government report reveals that British families throw away a third of the food they buy, thus creating unnecessary demand which further increases prices and causes greenhouse gas emissions.

Leaders of the G8 are meeting in Japan today (7 July) for a three-day summit that will address a number of pressing issues, including soaring food and gas prices. The Commission hopes the talks will also foster greater consensus on a global climate change deal.

Guy Riba, the deputy director of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), highlights the many challenges the world will have to meet by 2050 if it wants to feed its nine-billion inhabitants without destroying its environment. He spoke to EurActiv ahead of a major conference by the French Presidency today (3 July) in Parliament.

Amid the plethora of proposals, European heads of state and government were unable to overcome their divisions over how best to address soaring oil prices during the European summit in Brussels.

Finance ministers from the G8 countries met on 13 and 14 June to discuss the current state of the global economy. The group expressed "strong concerns" about soaring crude oil and agricultural commodity prices, issues that are also high on the EU's current political agenda. 

Environment ministers from the EU's 27 member states are unlikely to reach an agreement on core criteria for the sustainability of biofuels, according to a document circulated by the Slovenian Presidency.

The environmental cost of imported foodstuffs used in restaurants is much higher than previously thought, with cheaper meals carrying higher carbon footprints, according to a study by the University of Nottingham.

As the current food and commodity price boom leads to a massive redistribution of wealth in the world, the International Food Policy Research Institute is calling on major oil and food exporting countries and related corporations to participate in funding the response to the crisis.

EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has rejected allegations that EU policies to promote biofuels are to blame for rising food prices amid calls by the UN to "cut back significantly" on agrofuel support programmes.

EU consumers should get used to paying more for food as prices for meat, grain, cereal and a range of agricultural commodities are set to increase further, according to EU officials and MEPs debating the issue in Strasbourg yesterday (22 April). The EU's current push for biofuels came under repeated scrutiny during the discussion. 

The Commission has proposed speeding up market authorisation for foods ranging from cloned meat to exotic products from third countries. But the proposed centralised authorisation system is raising questions at a time when the safety of GMOs is back under the spotlight.

Low income households are increasingly turning to cheap packaged and fatty food, warns Jaap C. Seidel, a nutrition and health professor, inisisting that EU agricultural subsidies should to be turned round to make fruit and vegetables more affordable.

Food prices are rising in Europe because it has been too hot and has not rained enough, but also because farmland is increasingly being used for biofuels instead of food production, writes Hans-Werner Sinn, President of the Institute for Economic Research (IFO) and Professor of Economics and Finance at the University of Munich.

The Socialist Group in the European Parliament has criticised the Commission for not having anticipated the changes in the world dairy market. But Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel qualifies recent price increases as being the "market in action", beyond EU control.

The innovation challenge facing the EU's food industry, which consists mainly of SMEs, will be to tailor products and services to changing environmental and consumer needs.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has expressed doubts over proposed Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs) for pesticides in member states, saying that risks could not be excluded with 144 substances.

The first results from the EU's Sixth Research Framework programme (FP6) relate to healthier and better quality nutrition.

The Commission wants national food-safety inspectors to receive harmonised training to ensure proper implementation of EU law and a high level of food safety and consumer protection. The task could be entrusted to an EU agency.