Page 872 of articles about news

The seventeen members of the new Pig Meat Supply Chain Task Force, set up to identify the biggest challenges faced by the industry and suggest solutions, met for the first time yesterday. The group is working to improve the resilience of the supply chain through: • investigating how a standardised code of practice for clearer labelling could be introduced; • improving pig herd health; • examining how to increase the amount of produce reared to higher British welfare standards bought through Public Sector procurement; and • addressing the regulatory burden on the supply chain.

Blue-ear pig disease has spread to new areas of the central Quang Nam province of Vietnam, said the Animal Health Department of Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on Wednesday. The epidemic has struck pig herds in 31 communes of four districts of the province, said the department.

If Brussels doesn't help the crisis-hit Danish pig industry it will flood the European market causing a price collapse, farms commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has been told. Currently, countries producing mainly for the domestic market have seen an upturn, but countries such as Denmark, which depend on exports to third countries, are experiencing difficulties.

Decision 2008/185/EC lays down the additional guarantees relating to that disease for movements of pigs between Member States. Those additional guarantees are linked to the disease-status of the concerned Member States or regions thereof. The experience in implementing those guarantees has shown that it is necessary to clarify that the movement of pigs between Member States or regions thereof, which are free of Aujeszky’s disease and where vaccination is prohibited and which are listed in Annex I to Decision 2008/185/EC, does not require any additional guarantees.

Financial experts from leading cooperative banks met in Brussels last week to discuss agricooperatives’ access to finance and risk assessment. They concluded that agribusiness in general and agri-cooperatives in particular are well-placed to weather the current financial crisis, due to their business model being based on credibility, stability and a low-risk approach.

U.S. meat exports will be excluded from Mexico's tariff increases planned for 90 U.S. agricultural and industrial products, a spokesman from the Agriculture Ministry said on Tuesday. Mexico's national meat council confirmed that all meat products would be exempt from the new tariff rules.

European food labelling legislation, which included NFU amendments on country of origin labelling, has been postponed until the next Parliament as there are over 900 amendments.

Despite growing public support to ban the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in food animals, a U.S. representative said on Tuesday efforts to move legislation through Congress this year could be met with resistance. The bill, introduced in the House of Representatives by Louise Slaughter and in the Senate by Edward Kennedy, would ban the use of antibiotics important to human health from being used on cattle, hogs, sheep and poultry unless animals are ill.

An outbreak of African swine fever has been confirmed at a farm in southern Russia's Stavropol Region, the region's chief veterinary official said on Thursday.

A new report highlights a number of measures taken over the past three and a half years which reduce red tape for farmers, companies involved in the food business and administrations, and promise to reduce annual costs by hundreds of millions of euros , which will render European farming more competitive.

The Government of Canada is extending its support for hog farmers who have downsized their herds to cope with tough economic times. Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz today announced that the time period covered by the Cull Breeding Swine Program has been extended, which will provide more assistance to farmers.

The European Commission has launched a call for tender for a project "Inventory of certification schemes for agricultural products and foodstuffs marketed in the EU Member States".

The revision of the regulation could contemplate mechanisms for the authorisation of storage systems for animal carcasses. (Original in Spanish. Read Google translation here).