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ISO 22000

Co-op Gets Serious: No caged hens, only Fairtrade hot drinks, reduce pesticides + packaging

– 11th Feb 2008 by Alex Briggs

The Co-operative Group, have announced transparent, detailed plans on addressing stakeholder concerns. They will ban the sale of eggs from caged hens, convert its entire own-brand hot beverage range to Fairtrade, reduce the weight of its wine packaging and add a further 66 pesticides to its prohibited list.

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CHR Hanson focuses on sustainability in new Environmental report

– 25th Jan 2008 by Alex Briggs

CHR Hanson has published their environmental report, with the focus being around sustainable business.
We need to improve our monitoring capacity further to ensure that our baseline measurements are correct and comparable,” the company stated.

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Sustainability in the Food Supply Chain: Hype or Trend?

– 25th Jan 2008 by Cor Groenveld

A roundtable discussion was recently organised by LRQA’s Netherlands office. The focus was on sustainability in the Food Supply Chain.
Here is a brief synopsis of the topics covered and the key points raised.

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UK looks to single labelling system for foods

– 25th Jan 2008 by Alex Briggs

The UK government is announing plans on simplifying food labelling. This article examines the plans to tackle obesity through a new labelling system.

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Are ethical food labels telling the whole story?

– 14th Jan 2008 by Alex Briggs

Organic or fairtrade? Sustainable or certified? With so many labels on food, clothes and white goods, it’s a miracle that we make it to the checkout before closing time. This article in the Observer takes a look at some of the labels out there. Which ones live up to their eco credentials?

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Is your beer safe?

– 30th Oct 2007 by Alex Briggs

Anheuser Busch has denied serious allegations by Greenpeace that their Budweiser beer contains traces of a genetically engineered strain of rice known as “Liberty Link”.
Liberty Link is a series of strains of GM rice from Bayer CropScience. Some of the strains are banned in a number of markets around the world for human consumption, but not in the US.
Due to Anheuser Busch’s position as the largest single purchaser of American rice, Greenpeace claims that the group had a responsibility to ensure it was fully aware of how it is sourcing ingredients.

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China cracks down on food producers

– 2nd Oct 2007 by Cor Groenveld

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald addresses the food safety concerns in China. The Chinese Government revoked the production licenses of hundreds of companies. It is known that food safety is very high on the agenda of China’s government. Reasons for that are the coming Olympics and the negative publicity from several food scandals. [...]

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New Food Safety Website for smaller firms

– 2nd Oct 2007 by Cor Groenveld

Small and medium food companies often struggle with food safety requirements. The USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) has created a website to help small and medium size firms better manage their food safety.

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Impact of Food Waste and possible uses

– 2nd Oct 2007

A CNN article has taken a holistic look at the causes and effects of global food waste:
According to the UN Food Programme, US food waste could:
satisfy “every empty stomach” in Africa
Some other key facts from the article:
The US and Japan waste up to 50% of all their food
the entire food supply chain in the [...]

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How organic is organic? More bad news for British farmers

– 24th Sep 2007 by Alex Briggs

This Times article has raised a difficult topic for organic farmers.

The article reveals that Helen Browning, the director of food and farming at the Soil Association, sends pig shoulders from Wiltshire, England to Germany for processing into sausages and imports pork loins from Sweden to make bacon.

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