Close to 100 participants from Europe, Canada, north and south America, Australia and Hong Kong attended an exciting and informative conference on food fraud and food allergy in Bari, Italy, on 26th and 27th January 2017. The conference was organised by Prof. Roland Poms of MoniQA (International Association for Monitoring and Quality Assurance in the Total Food Supply Chain) and Dr Linda Monaci of ISPA (Istituto di Scienze delle Produzioni Alimentari).

Michael Walker, of the Government Chemist Programme in LGC, delivered a keynote talk ‘Food detectives: what it takes to trace food fraud’ in the Food Fraud section of the conference. Michael also discussed allergen analysis with a talk entitled ‘What do we need to measure? How should it be reported? And how low can we go?’ in the Food Allergen Management section.

Food fraud and food allergen management are topics that rarely share one event, but have a lot in common. Appropriate food labeling and consumer trust are very important issues which need to be managed by the food industry. Both may have strong impact on the health and socio-economic status of a society. They both need adequate communication and demand the use of comprehensive databases and sophisticated analytical methods. Both require a collaborative effort from science, industry and the regulatory environment.

The conference brought together participants from the food industry, ingredient suppliers, agricultural producers, retail and trade, consumer organizations, private and public analytical laboratories, representatives from R&D, marketing, quality control, legal departments, as well as food scientists, technologists, analytical method providers, regulatory bodies, authorities and the media. There were productive discussions and sharing of ideas that, it is hoped, will assist stakeholders to address the problems in these interrelated areas.

Notes from the event are collected in the attached document.

Minister of State (I/C) for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Shri Dharmendra Pradhan will be visiting Boston and Houston, USA from 3-7 March 2017 along with a delegation comprising CEOs of Public Sector Oil and Gas companies.

According to United Daily News in Taiwan, after three and a half years of operation in Taiwan, Uber received 11 penalties with fines totaling US$7.42 million and was required to close business by the transportation administration in Taiwan yesterday. Uber announced to close its business in Taiwan on Feb. 20. Meanwhile, the Uber TAXI service, which is scheduled to be online in February, was also closed. However, UberEATS service, which was online at the end of last year, will continue its service.

Uber said it will restart communication with Taiwan administration. The transportation administration of Taiwan asked Uber to operate its business legally. Hochen Tan, the head of the transportation administration, said that both sides should seize the opportunity to communicate and avoid a dead end.

In July 2013, by establishing a company named Taiwan Yu Bo Shu Wei service Co., Ltd, Uber entered Taiwan. The new company is registered as an information service business. Its service area includes Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Keelung, Taichung and Kaohsiung.

However, Uber’s business is related with motor transport service without business registration certification and professional driver licensing. Over the past three years, Taiwan administration issued 513 penalties with a total fine of US$3.11 million to Uber and its drivers. Uber paid US$2.2 million.

With the implementation of an updated law, the fine amount has been increased greatly by the Taiwan administration. Since the implementation of the new rule Jan. 6, any company who breaks the new rule will be fined US$32.3 thousand, and the fine amount will be raised to US$161.2 thousand for the second violation. Anyone who breaks the rule six times in total or three times in half a year will be fined with US$806 thousand and required to close its business.

By Jan. 20, 48 Uber cars had been banned and a total amount of US$35.47 million in fines had been issued by the transportation administration of Taiwan.

Today the EU  Heads of state and government will meet in Malta. Their background text will be the pessimistic and alarmist letter from Mr Tusk that we talked about on Wednesday.

The meeting will mainly be concerned with strengthening the EU’s external borders, with special emphasis on the problems of Libya. There are in the EU’s view too many migrants coming across the sea from Libya. The EU wishes to work with the Libyan authorities – to the extent that there are authorities in charge there – to reduce the flows. The EU may also wish to beef up its naval force, though so far this has been used to offer safe transit to the EU for those who have taken to the seas in dangerous and overloaded boats and got into trouble. The EU will wish to take stronger action against people smugglers, though that too will require co-operation with governments on the African continent.

All this illustrates the cruel dilemma of Mr Tusk’s letter. He does not wish the EU to give concessions to people he calls populists or to political parties that challenge the elite view of the EU. Yet he feels the need to hold a summit largely devoted to the populist issue of trying to reduce the flow of migrants and to strengthen the EU’s external borders.  He is ambiguous about the elite themselves, saying they genuflect too far towards populists, yet saying they are losing faith in the democracy which is driving the populist movements. I guess Mrs Merkel felt the need to change her permissive immigration policy owing to the pressure of public opinion. Does Mr Tusk think this was the wrong thing to do?

Important though Mr Tusk is within the EU, he is but the servant of the Council which is made up of the Heads of state and government. If they say they wish to shift policy in the so called populist direction, he has to allow them an agenda to do so. It will  be fascinating to see what emerges from their consideration yet again of migration and borders.

I do hope they take up the UK’s request to lift the uncertainty they have created for British citizens living in other EU countries. If they just agree they are all welcome to stay, the UK can confirm the same for all EU citizens legally settled in the UK. It is the right and decent thing to do, so why won’t they do it? I am sure Mrs May will ask them again. I thought civilised values were part of their idea of the EU, but they are  not showing them on this matter.

The later afternoon session will be for the EU 27 only. They plan to discuss how to celebrate the 6oth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which they think the UK could not help them with. It will be fascinating to see what celebration they want to hold, and what they think are their main achievements to trumpet.