Summary of newspapers of the previous day – 17. 3. 2009

European foods assert themselves by tradition and quality

To maintain and at the same time to simplify business norm, certification systems, and trademarks, that all is important for consumers and producers. These words can summarize conclusions of the Conference of agricultural products and foods quality which took place yesterday and today in Prague with participation of the Euro-commissioner Mariann Fisher Boel, the Minister of Agriculture Petr Gandalovič and roughly a ten ministers of agriculture of EU countries. “All systems warranting quality, quaranteed origin, and production procedure work well at present and we should not faint them. Their functioning is important for consumer´s protection.

Number s of pigs decreased by 37 pct in region Hradec Králové, breeding is loss-making

Numbers of pigs bred in the region Hradec Králové decreased by 37 percents to 142 800 pieces year-on-year last year. The biggest decrease was recorded in pigs for fattening whose number fell by 42 percents. The data were published by Hradec branch of the Czech Statistic Office. The cause of underflow of pig numbers is a decrease in buy-out prices of pig meat and from it resulting unprofitability of the breeding, a chairman of the Agricultural Union in Hradec Králové Zdeněk Matějíček said to ČTK. “The price crisis in pig meat has lasted for longer time. Many enterprises have already finished with breeding”, Matějíček told.

MfD: According to experts Šumava were damaged by timber harvesting

Timber harvesting ten years ago damaged Šumava forests and created useless clearings. It was found out by a group of scientists which investigates Šumava forests in last decade. If the harvesting had been careful in the Šumava park ten year ago, today´s clearings and dry forests could have been full of high-grown ten-year spruces today. Harvesters churned them up with wide tyres or buried them under bark from processed trunks, today´s Mladá fronta Dnes (MfD) writes. “Damaged trees are in the whole park area. The harvesting damaged several-centimeter trees, so, the most sensitive”, Magda Jonášová from the Institute of system biology and ecology of Academy of Sciences of the CR in České Budějovice said to the newspaper.

Foods are not radioactive, checks confirmed it

Even after almost twenty three years from the biggest nuclear incident in human history, the outbreak of fourth block of Černobyl power station, surrounding states have to check radioactivity incidence in some foods. In the Czech Republic the duty belongs to the State Agricultural and Food Inspection. Besides this it measures also radioactivity of free-growing mushrooms and mushroom products which are imported in the Czech Republic from countries afflicted by Černobyl incident. “Last year we tested 28 samples of crop-plants of Czech production, for example potatoes, cereals, leaf-, root- and berry- vegetable and fruits”.