Tag: Food

ISLAMABAD - Exports of textile and food groups have registered considerable growth during the first eight months of the current year, surging by 28.67 percent and 18.28 percent respectively.
Textile exports, during July-February (2010-11), were recorded at $8.637 billion against exports of $6.708 billion in the same period last year, Federal Bureau of Statistics reported. Similarly, food exports augmented during the period under review and stood at $2.465 billion compared to

FAISALABAD - Punjab Minister for Food, Mines and Minerals Chaudhary Abdul Ghafoor Khan has said that elements involved in the menace of adulteration and hoardings should be dealt with strictly. He said this while talking to journalists at the residence of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz MPA and Parliamentary Secretary Nazia Raheel. He added that import and export policies must be reviewed to overcome the shortage of sugar and other essential commodities that often led to crisis. He said

RIKUZENTAKATA - A widening cloud of radiation on Tuesday added to the misery of millions of people in Japan's devastated northeast, already short of water and food and trying to keep warm in near-freezing temperatures.
As bodies washed up on the coast from Friday's devastating earthquake and tsunami, injured survivors, children and elderly crammed into makeshift shelters, often without medicine. By Monday, 550,000 people had been evacuated after the cataclysmic events that

SINGAPORE - Radioactive materials spewed into the air by Japan's earthquake-crippled nuclear plant may contaminate food and water resources, with children and unborn babies most at risk of possibly developing cancer.
Experts said any exposure to radioactive materials has the potential to cause various kinds of cancers, with higher levels of radiation seen as more dangerous. But they said they needed more accurate measurements for the level of radioactivity in Japan, and the

ABU DHABI - Surging global prices of basic foodstuffs raise the risk that the food crisis of 2007-2008 in developing countries will be repeated, the head of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization said on Monday. A jump in oil prices and the fast recent drawdown in global stocks of cereals could herald a supply crisis, FAO Director General Jacques Diouf told Reuters in an interview during a visit to the United Arab Emirates. "The high prices raise concern and we've been quickly

OSLO - Leaps in food prices linked to drought in Brazil or floods in Australia may be a foretaste of ever greater shocks to be caused by climate change, according to a commission named on Friday to find ways to fix the problems. The international group of 13 experts will try to come up with ideas in the next 10 months to help agriculture cope with global warming, blamed by the U.N. panel of climate experts mainly on mankind's emissions of greenhouse gases.
John Beddington,

KARACHI - Pakistan's annual consumer price inflation was likely at 14.10 percent in February, as food prices remained low and the government was absorbing most of the impact of higher world oil prices, a Reuters poll shows. A higher base effect from last year also likely helped a marginally slower rise in the consumer price index (CPI) in February, after it rose 14.19 percent in January from a year earlier.
"It seems that the government's and the central bank's patience with the

KARACHI - Sindh Food Minister Nadir Magsi may be famous as Karachi's best car racer, but he is also an agriculturalist - albeit one who makes his living by allegedly sowing poppy and guarding the cultivation with all his (mighty) force, Pakistan Today has learnt. Coupled with the fields, a number of factories also operate under the patronage and protection of Magsi - producing refined heroin that sells for millions of rupees in Sindh and Balochistan, well-placed sources in the

KARACHI - The Chhipa Welfare Association (CWA) announced the launch of its free food programme on Sunday. Prominent social worker and CWA patron-in-chief Ramzan Chhipa said that the programme aims to extend free food services to the poor across Karachi.
He said that the programme's launch is the result of planning, which aimed at receiving public donations and charity required to meet the expenses being accrued on providing free food to the deprived. Earlier, Chhipa was briefed

ISLAMABAD - Food exports from Pakistan have witnessed an increase of 33 percent in January and 12.95 percent during the first seven months of current fiscal year. Overall food exports have been recorded at $2.035 billion during July-January (2010-11) as against the exports of $1.801 billion during July-January (2009-10).
The food items that contributed towards positive growth of exports included wheat. The other items that showed upward trend in exports during the period under

FAISALABAD - Food and agriculture experts are unanimous on the point that world food security can be threatened if wild relative plants' species of the crops grown by mankind are not conserved. Some of them think that climate change will bring great environmental changes, food insecurity, water shortage, terrorism, refugees, natural, economic, and social disaster and loss of biodiversity in a more dangerous fashion.
In this perspective, it is important to note that Pakistan is a

PARIS - World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned leaders of the top global economies that the world is reaching a danger point where soaring food prices threaten further political instability. "I mentioned that we are reaching a danger point," Zoellick said, adding that he had urged G20 finance ministers and central bank chiefs meeting here to put food first in 2011.
Zoellick said rising prices would eventually result in increased food supplies but in the intervening couple of

ISLAMABAD - Leading Danish Food Company Castus has commenced import of Pakistani dates from southern of Pakistan to produce healthy fruit bars for children in Denmark. It plans to import around 800 tonnes of dates each year with a total value of $650,000. This is the first time that Pakistan will be exporting dates to Denmark and it aims to develop a new niche for Pakistani products on the Danish market.
Castus is a well known Danish enterprise which has been producing fruit bars

FAISALABAD - A district health team raided a factory and recovered tons of adulterated red chili being packed by its employees. The raid was a part of Distirct Coordination Officer (DCO) Nasim Sadiq's ongoing crackdown against those playing with the lives of people by selling unhygienic and adulterated food items.
The DCO had recently formed a special committee headed by Dr Captain Muhammad Akram to root out adulteration from the city. The committee was tipped off that a factory

ISLAMABAD - Directing the Capital Development Authority (CDA) to explain why and under what procedure space for restaurants in the city's hilly areas had been allotted to various parties, the National Assembly Standing Committee on Environment asked the authority to submit a detailed report on why this environmentally dangerous action had been taken.
The NA body met on Saturday with its chairman MNA Raja Muhammad Asad Khan in the chair, who directed CDA Chairman Imtiaz Inayat

SEOUL - South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak called on Monday for new strategies to help secure a stable supply of food amid growing concerns about a global food crisis.
"The likelihood of a global food crisis is rising due to climate change. We need to set up national strategies and research to tackle the issue," Lee's spokesman quoted him as saying during a meeting with senior advisers. Lee also called for a task force from the government and private sector to be set up to

ROME - United Nations food agencies on Friday warned that record-high prices for basic commodities are helping generate unrest around the world and contributed to the ousting of the Tunisian president last month. "Not only is there a risk, but there have already been riots in some parts of the world because of rising prices," Jacques Diouf, head of the UN's Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), told reporters.
"Some governments have found themselves in difficult