Summary of newsmakers of the previous day – 19.1.2008

Test of MF DNES: How to choose and store cheeses correctly?

Do you like cheeses but you have already experienced that they did not taste as they should have? We will advise not only how to choose and store cheeses but also how they should be served. Would you like to buy an expensive cheese but a staff knows nothing about it. How old is it; where it comes from, or with what it goes - you will not get to know. It is a usual situation in supermarkets. Management of chains asserts that a training for employees does not pay them off because people behind the counter changes every month. And when you want to have cut for example hundred grams of cheese or only a small slice to taste as it is common in specialized shops, you will probably meet with unwillingness or the stuff will refer you to a cooling counter with packaged pieces.

Corn rich of provitamins A

American biologists and agronomists developed a new highly effective and cheap selection procedure by which it is possible to increase a content of provitamins A in the grain of corn. In South America and sub-Saharan Africa a lack of vitamin A represents a really serious problem. A sufficient supply with provitamin for production of the vitamin A is not ensured in 17 - 30 % children at age to five years. Consequences are dreadful. 300 thousand children lose their sight annually in consequence of the lack of vitamin A. A number of this way handicapped is reckoned to 40 million. Other 250 million suffer from other health problems invoked by a lack of vitamin A.

EU will decide on checks of farmers

Already next year farmers in the Czech Republic can become a target of unannounced checks which will examine whether all regulations regarding conservation of nature and health of animals as well as food regulation are kept. And if they break the regulations, they will lose a part of European subsidies. Union's ministers of agriculture will decide on it in Brussels on Monday. The European Union has already known for a long time how the check will look like in fact. There is remaining one important thing - from what data it will start. Old member states together with the European Commission try to introduce them already from the next January. However, Union's greenhorns including the Czech Republic try to postpone them.

Country of origin holds in all without exception

From the beginning of this year a country of origin has to be introduced on all kinds of fruit and vegetable. This obligatory marking hold already before now but only in kinds which are set (it enumerates every item) by a document of European sale norm. A new regulation concerning even accompanying materials determines special rules according to which all kind have to be marked by a country of origin without exception. The mentioned regulation of the EU No. 1182/2007 adjusts conditions of fruit and vegetable trade on the European market. Therefore we asked for references representatives of some trade companies and relevant institutions.