730 research outputs found
An alternative allergen risk management approach
Protein components in food can trigger immune-mediated response in susceptible individuals. International law requires risk assessment to be undertaken by competent individuals to minimize food safety risk to consumers. Historically, allergen control legislation has been food focused and on the requirement for on pack labeling, and the need for formal food recalls in the event of misleading or inappropriate labeling. In order to develop a mechanism for decision makers when assessing allergenic risk from plant derived materials, the aim of this research was to consider a more holistic risk assessment method whereby rather than just using the food-based approach, an additive element in terms of considering the families of proteins is included. This approach reflects the need for food professionals to fully understand the role of proteins in triggering an allergic response to plant material and the health risk to individuals who show cross-reactivity to such proteins
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Digital switchover in Europe
This article discusses the political, economic, technological and human aspects of the digital switchover in Europe and explores various policies for managing the process. The article first examines the advantages and drawbacks of digital switchover, and identifies a number of challenges and policy dilemmas of making switchover an achievable objective. It goes on to look at digital television adoption across Europe and assesses the effectiveness of free-to-air digital television to accelerate take-up. Finally, the article examines EU initiatives as well as national plans in digital switchover and proposes various measures for encouraging the take-up of digital services and therefore bringing forward the likely idea of analogue switch-off
Livestock trade networks for guiding animal health surveillance
BACKGROUND: Trade in live animals can contribute to the introduction of exotic diseases, the maintenance and spread endemic diseases. Annually millions of animals are moved across Europe for the purposes of breeding, fattening and slaughter. Data on the number of animals moved were obtained from the Directorate General Sanco (DG Sanco) for 2011. These were converted to livestock units to enable direct comparison across species and their movements were mapped, used to calculate the indegrees and outdegrees of 27 European countries and the density and transitivity of movements within Europe. This provided the opportunity to discuss surveillance of European livestock movement taking into account stopping points en-route. RESULTS: High density and transitivity of movement for registered equines, breeding and fattening cattle, breeding poultry and pigs for breeding, fattening and slaughter indicates that hazards have the potential to spread quickly within these populations. This is of concern to highly connected countries particularly those where imported animals constitute a large proportion of their national livestock populations, and have a high indegree. The transport of poultry (older than 72 hours) and unweaned animals would require more rest breaks than the movement of weaned animals, which may provide more opportunities for disease transmission. Transitivity is greatest for animals transported for breeding purposes with cattle, pigs and poultry having values of over 50%. CONCLUSIONS: This paper demonstrated that some species (pigs and poultry) are traded much more frequently and at a larger scale than species such as goats. Some countries are more vulnerable than others due to importing animals from many countries, having imported animals requiring rest-breaks and importing large proportions of their national herd or flock. Such knowledge about the vulnerability of different livestock systems related to trade movements can be used to inform the design of animal health surveillance systems to facilitate the trade in animals between European member states. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12917-015-0354-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users
European tourism policy: Its evolution and structure
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. This article reviews the procedural complexity of tourism policy-making by the European Commission leading up to the 2010 Communication. Initially, the European Commission had to present interventions affecting tourism as a community action or measure; intended to assist in the implementation of the Internal Market. Later, integration of the sustainable development principle into European Treaties established a framework for governance and a foundation for tourism policy, and the Lisbon Treaty in 2007 established a European policy that explicitly related to tourism, albeit a complementary competence in character. This article highlights a lack of leadership from the Member States throughout the process and contrasts this with the self-serving, driving force of the Commission in making tourism policy that focuses primarily on promotional actions. Consequently, the Commission has not created a robust, dynamic, flexible European model for tourism, designed in a way to best serve the needs of the Member States
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Growing pains? The transition to digital television in Europe
This article argues that national policies for digital television (DTV) are largely determined by markets, political contexts and supra-national influences, notably European Union (EU) audiovisual policy, which puts pressure on member states to speed up digital switchover.This creates a tension between the push of the EU to harmonize the switchover process and set target dates and the struggle of some of the countries to comply with this policy. In terms of the strategies that could be employed to accelerate digital uptake, the article points to setting a prompt date for analogue switch-off, subsidizing the relevant equipment to receive DTV, offering triple play services, ensuring active management to complete conversion effectively and, above all, adopting free-to-view DTV. The wide reach free-to-air model, in which public broadcasters have a leading role, ensures that the universality principle is maintained in the digital age
Whatever Happened to Social Dialogue? From Partnership to Managerialism in the EU Employment Agenda
Substance Flow Analysis of Wastes Containing Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers:The Need for More Information and for Final Sinks
Rural Development Programme measures on cultivated land in Europe to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions – regional ‘hotspots’ and priority measures
© 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.Agriculture is a significant source of GHG emissions, contributing 10% of total emissions within the EU-28. Emissions from European agriculture have been reduced, albeit at the expense of crop yield and the risk of production displacement (the transfer of production, and associated emissions, to land outside of Europe). This article assesses the impact on GHG emissions of selected European Rural Development Program measures, representative of a diversity of management strategies implemented on cultivated land, within nine European Member States. Climatic zone and underlying spatial environmental variables were accounted for using a novel technique, “Regional Variation Categories,” developed with European-scale GIS data sets. Production displacement is assessed with two benchmarks: (1) compared with existing crop production and (2) relative to a “minimum requirement” land management scenario, where an emissions reduction of less than this does not constitute mitigation. Most measures reduce emissions relative to the baseline crop scenario; however, many do not reduce emissions beyond the “minimum requirement,” this being limited to measures such as catch crops and within-field grass areas to prevent soil erosion. The selection and targeting of measures to maximize agricultural GHG mitigation on cultivated land within Europe is discussed...Peer reviewedFinal Published versio
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