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GLOBAL – Gen Z and younger Millennials are ‘breaking the norm’ when it comes to sweetener preferences among different generations, a new study by taste and nutrition company Kerry has revealed. According to the study, younger consumers are placing greater importance on sugar in food and drinks, with 36% of these consumers skeptical of ingredients used to replace sugar in…
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KENYA – Unscrupulous sugar business in Kenya has picked pace amid high surging prices for the commodity due to an ongoing shortage that has pushed retail prices threefold compared to January, for a two-kilogram packet. A few days after the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) got hold of a condemned consignment of 20,000 bags of sugar that was released back…
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MADAGASCAR – The European Commission (EC) has called on the Malagasy executive to adopt a strategy to improve the phytosanitary compliance of the cowpea sector or risk losing the commodity’s export licenses. According to Ecofin Agency, the ultimatum follows concerns raised by Olivier Machiels, head of development cooperation within the EU that the legume has traces of chlorpyrifos, a chemical…
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NIGERIA – Dr. Agnes Yemisi Asagbra has been chosen to succeed Dr. Rufus Ebegba as the new Director-General/CEO of the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA), who has served his two terms to completion. According to a statement from Gloria Agbaki, public relations officer, the newly appointed DG stated during a handover ceremony that within eight years she should build on…
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KENYA – Esther Ngari, the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) Director of Standards Development and Trade, has stepped in to steer the country’s standards regulator as its new Acting Managing Director after a condemned sugar scandal that led to the suspension of KEBS boss Lt. Col (Rtd) Bernard Njiraini. Esther was appointed by the Bureau’s policy-making body, the National Standards Council (NSC),…
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AUSTRALIA – Australia’s Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is applying to the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) for permission to commercially cultivate genetically modified (GM) banana plants that have been engineered to withstand Fusarium wilt tropical race 4, popularly known as Panama disease. The GM banana plants are not intended to replace the Cavendish banana crop now grown in Australia; rather,…
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U.S – Researchers at the University of Kentucky, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA ARS) have created the first gene-edited calf with resistance to the bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV), which costs the U.S. cattle industry billions of dollars every year. First discovered in the 1940s, BVDV is one of the…
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UGANDA – The Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) with support from the Danish government has opened a 3rd Food Safety Testing Laboratory for the Western Region based in Mbarara City. To make sure that they fulfill the minimum quality standards before being put on the market, the Regional Food Safety Laboratories will offer conformity assessment services to Businesses and…
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KENYA – Several state agency officials have been placed in the spotlight after 20,000 bags of contaminated sugar that had been previously condemned allegedly found their way into the market. The 27 officials from the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS), Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), National Police Service (NPS), and Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA) were suspended to pave way for…
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UK – The UK government is set to remove a provision that would have revoked any EU-derived laws that hadn’t already been replaced, repealed, or incorporated into UK domestic law by December from the Retained EU Law Bill (REUL). The Bill was announced in January 2022 with the intention of making it simpler to change, replace, and repeal existing…
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