Summary of newsmakers of the previous day – 22.8. 2007

SOS: Quality of sold fruit and vegetable is often bad

Quality of fruit and vegetable in shops and on markets is according to the Consumers Defence Association (SOS) is often low. SOS cooperators in recent inquiry of fruit and vegetable supply visited 20 shops and market places and they found sale of half-rotten fruit or vegetable in several places. According to SOS sellers also often do not keep their duties to mark this fruit with a country of origin. SOS called the State Agricultural and Food Inspection’s attention to the deficiencies. “For example in Olomouc our cooperators saw mouldy tomatoes and potatoes as well as half-rotten bananas, in Prague half-rotten carrot and parsley, that all not in one shop”, a spokeswoman of SOS Ivana Picková said to ČTK. She added that in several other towns it was common that vegetable just harvesting was sold flaccid or half-rotten. It is elusive that seller dare to offer such goods at all”, she pointed out.

Prices of cereals on corn-exchange grow further, most in wheat

Sale prices in most of commodities traded on the Corn-Exchange in Brno grow permanently. Price of feeding wheat raised; a ton is now for 4500 crowns, by 500 crowns more than two weeks ago. Price increase causes now a constant interest in harvested cereals from abroad, a general secretary of the exchange Karel Zezula said to ČTK today. A ton of feeding wheat in FCA parity when a transport is covered by a buyer costs now 4373 crowns which is by about 11 percent more than two weeks. In DPP parity when transport is paid by a seller a buyer will pay roughly by other 125 crowns more. For example food wheat rose in price by 417 crowns per ton and exceeded a border of 5000 crowns,” Zezula said.

European day without cars will be in the only month

An all-European campaign European Mobility Week will start on Sunday the 16th of September in at least 61 Czech and Moravian towns and will end on Saturday on the 22nd of September by already traditional “European day without cars”. Its aim is to support compared individual automobile transport alternatives more acceptable for safety, health of inhabitants, and the environment. Particular actions in towns are organized by in the campaign involved owns with their partners; at the all-republic level the campaign is organized by the Ministry of Environment in cooperation with the European Commission. The European Mobility Week as well as the European day without cars wants to catch media’s and public notice to a still hotter problem – growing emissions from transportation, even also of the most dangerous substances, still bigger demands for space, noise, thousands of dead and injured.

Prazdroj expects increase in export, it installs other fermentative tanks

An expected growth of foreign demand for premium beer Pilsner Urquell forced Pilsner Prazdroj exactly after a year to install other ten cylinder-conical tanks for beer fermentation in Pilsen. Thanks to investment for 120 million crowns the firm has already 114 of them. From October the Pilsener plant of the biggest brewery in the Czech Republic will be able to produce as many as 140 000 hectolitres of beer weakly, so six million hectolitres yearly, Alexej Bechtin, a spokesman of the firm said to ČTK. The investment will be followed by further development of cooking room, so two new copper caldrons and six lager tanks in spring 2008. From the year 2009 a weekly capacity of production in Pilsen will increase to 158 000 hectolitres of beer