Major brands are taking action
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Leading food manufacturers are changing their packaging because of health concerns about boxes made from recycled cardboard, the BBC has learned.
Researchers found toxic chemicals from recycled newspapers have been contaminating food sold in many cardboard cartons.
The chemicals, known as mineral oils, come from printing inks.
Jordans, the breakfast cereal company, told the BBC it has now stopped using recycled cardboard in its packs.
And Kellogg’s and Weetabix said they were taking steps to reduce the amount of mineral oil in their packaging.
Exposure to mineral oils has been linked to inflammation of internal organs and cancer.
Government scientists in Switzerland found quantities of mineral oils between 10 and 100 times above the agreed limit in foods like pasta, rice and cereals sold in cartons made from recycled cardboard.
‘Frightening’ potential
“Should there be any evidence from our study – and we will carry out a risk assessment – we will take immediate action to protect the public.”
Terry Donohoe Food Standards Agency
In one scientific paper they describe the potential for mineral oils to migrate into foodstuffs as “frightening”.
However, the Swiss food safety authorities have concluded that consumers who eat a balanced and varied diet have no need to worry.
In a statement Jordans said that, as an environmentally responsible company which had previously used largely recycled packaging, it had taken the decision to abandon it reluctantly, but felt it was sensible.
The BBC investigation found other food companies are aware of the issue – but none have so far followed Jordans’ lead.
More than half the cardboard used in Europe is made from recycled materials.
So-called “virgin board” from newly-harvested trees is more expensive and there is not enough of it to replace recycled card completely.
The research has been led by Dr Koni Grob at the government-run food safety laboratory of the Canton of Zurich.
In one study for the German food ministry last year he and his colleagues tested a sample of 119 products bought from German supermarkets.
They found mineral oils passed easily through the many of the inner bags used to keep food dry and fresh.
More than half of Europe’s cardboard is made from recycled materials
The longer a product stood on the shelves, the more mineral oil it was likely to absorb.
Dr Grob told the BBC: “Roughly 30 products from these 119 were free of mineral oil.
“For the others they all exceeded the limit, and most exceeded it more than 10 times, and we calculated that in the long run they would probably exceed the limit 50 times on average and many will exceed it several hundred times.”
The agreed safe limit for mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons, outlined in European legislation covering plastic packaging, is a concentration of 0.6mg per kilogram.
Two effects
Studies on rats have highlighted the dangers to health of mineral oils.
Dr Grob said: “Toxicologists talk about two effects. One is the chronic inflammation of various internal organs and the other one is cancer.”
But he stressed consumers would have to be exposed to contaminated foods over many years for their health to be at risk.
The Food and Drink Federation, which represents Britain’s food companies, said the Swiss study was “a good starting point for further investigations” – but not enough in itself to justify discontinuing the use of recycled card.
Manufacturers’ reactions
Nonetheless, some of the individual members of the FDF are taking steps to change their packaging.
Kelloggs said it was working with its suppliers on new packaging “which allows us to meet our environmental commitments but will also contain significantly lower levels of mineral oil.”
The company is also looking at alternative inner liners for its packets.
Dr Grob’s studies suggest only aluminium-coated bags or those made of certain types of thick plastic are an effective barrier to the migration of mineral oils.
Weetabix said it uses 100% recycled board because it is better for the environment, but is also looking at recycled packaging that does not contain recycled newspaper.
Like several other companies, it said: “Our data… does indicate that none of our products pose a risk to consumer health”.
In Germany the government has told the food and packaging industries to take immediate steps to reduce the risk from mineral oils, and is considering introducing mandatory rules.
In the UK the Food Standards Agency is doing research of its own: but so far it is only looking at how much mineral oil there is in recycled packaging, not how much gets into the food inside.
Terry Donohoe, the acting head of the FSA’s chemical safety division, said: “Should there be any evidence from our study – and we will carry out a risk assessment – we will take immediate action to protect the public.”
Dr Grob and his colleagues say that even switching to virgin cardboard would not eliminate the risk from mineral oils entirely.
This is because food cartons are themselves stored and transported in larger corrugated cardboard boxes which are also made from recycled newspapers, and are also a source of contamination.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Kosovans celebrated the third anniversary of their declaration of independence last month
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Serbia and Kosovo are due to hold their first high-level talks since Pristina declared independence three years ago.
Kosovo’s declaration of independence is rejected by Serbia, but both sides have agreed to the EU-sponsored talks.
The meeting in Brussels is due to focus on issues vital to Kosovo’s daily life, including telecoms and airspace.
Correspondents say progress is likely to determine whether Belgrade or Pristina can move towards eventual EU membership.
“The objective of the talks is to improve the lives of people in the region, to improve co-operation within the Balkans as a whole and bring (them) more in line with European standards,” a senior EU official said, quoted by Reuters.
Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority fought an insurgency against Serbia in the 1990s, a conflict in which more than 10,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands driven from their homes.
Kosovo was placed under UN administration and unilaterally declared independence three years ago.
So far it has been recognised by 75 countries, including the US and most of the EU.
Serbia continues to block Kosovo’s trade and routinely stops passengers with Kosovo passports or car registrations.
Among other issues, Kosovo also cannot get its own telephone country code or join many international economic bodies because of Belgrade’s opposition.
The BBC’s Mark Lowen in Belgrade says that while neither side will back down from their fundamental position on Kosovo’s status, the goal of eventual EU membership might just persuade them to reach a compromise solution.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Jennifer Currie has arrived back in Merseyside after fleeing from Libya
The government has rejected claims that it did not give enough aid to a British woman fleeing violence in Libya.
Jennifer Currie, 28, from Merseyside, eventually got out of the north African country by travelling through Tunisia and flying home from Germany.
However, Foreign Secretary William Hague insisted his department had done everything it could to help her.
Earlier, Mr Hague was criticised following a botched SAS mission to make contact with the Libyan opposition.
Ms Currie is now back home in Thornton near Crosby after visiting her partner’s family near Tripoli with her two daughters, aged six and eight months.
Labour MP for Sefton Central Bill Esterson told the Commons he was disgusted about her case.
“It took the Foreign Office 36 hours to agree to pay for a taxi to the airport, and my case worker had to persuade the Foreign Office to arrange flights home,” he said.
“Jennifer had to agree to pay £1,400 for the tickets when she got home.”
Mr Hague responded: “We are delighted that his constituent and her children have been able to get to safety from Libya.
“FCO (Foreign & Commonwealth Office) staff in London bought flights for her and her children and ensured she had assistance at Tripoli airport.
“They met her in Tunis and ensured she made her flight via Frankfurt to the United Kingdom and we’re not expecting her to repay the cost of the air fares.”
Labour had accused the government of “serial bungling” over the mission aimed at making contact with those leading opposition to the rule of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Six soldiers and two Foreign Office officials were detained for two days by rebels in eastern Libya but were freed on Sunday and left the country.
Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander told the Commons that it was seen as “just the latest setback for the UK and raises further serious questions about ministers’ grip and response to the unfolding events in Libya”.
Mr Hague said the personnel were withdrawn after a “serious misunderstanding” over their role.
RAF pilots rescued British oil workers stranded in Libya last week using a black and white Google Maps printout to land, it has emerged.
Flt Lt Stuart Patton, based at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire, flew a C130 Hercules on the mission which had not been approved by air traffic control at Tripoli.
He said: “I’d been handed some information from the internet that had been hastily printed out, including a black and white satellite image from Google Maps.
“You had to laugh, and we knew were going to have to conduct an assessment of the site ourselves to see if it was suitable for landing.”
A Tory MP has urged the international community to arm the Libyan opposition against pro-Gaddafi forces forces.
Mark Pritchard, vice-chairman of the Conservative foreign affairs and defence committee, said: “Having encouraged the Libyan people to make a stand, the international community must quickly provide up-to-date weaponry if Gadaffi’s troops are not to retake lost ground and reconsolidate his regime.
“This is a time for clarity of purpose and supporting by all means necessary a Libyan solution to a primarily Libyan problem.
“In short, the international community needs to provide the tools for the Libyan people to finish the job.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
At least 20 oil workers have been abducted by suspected guerrillas in a remote jungle region of eastern Colombia.
The local workers for the Canadian oil exploration firm Talisman are thought to have been seized by the Farc rebel group, which has a strong presence in the area in Vichada Department.
They are reported to have been taken deeper into the jungle in canoes.
Colombian troops have been sent to try to find them.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Asia-Pacific is forecast to become the world’s biggest aircraft market over the next two decades
The world’s biggest aircraft manufacturers will be battling for customers as they gather for the Hong Kong airshow.
The exhibition got underway on Tuesday, with leading players looking to tap into the growing Asian market.
Asia-Pacific is forecast to become the largest air transport market over the next two decades.
Passenger numbers in the region are likely to grow by 5.8% a year, according to Airbus.
Airbus estimates that Asia will account for 33% of all aircraft orders in the next two decades, compared with a 26% share between 1990 and 2009.
That translates into 8,560 new planes worth $1.2 trillion (£735bn), Airbus said.
Growth is expected to be powered not only by orders from commercial airlines, but also from an increasing demand for private jets, especially from China.
Mainland China’s economic success has seen the rise of an affluent class that is keen to fly on private and corporate planes.
According to Airbus, Chinese customers accounted for about 25% of its business-jet sales last year.
Francois Chazelle, the company’s vice president of executive and private aviation, said that at present the Middle East has a 50% share of Airbus’s business-jet market.
However, China should get close to that size in “a couple of years”.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Websites face restrictions on how they watch what their users do.
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How websites track visitors and tailor ads to their behaviour is about to undergo a big shake-up.
From 25 May, European laws dictate that “explicit consent” must be gathered from web users who are being tracked via text files called “cookies”.
These files are widely used to help users navigate faster around sites they visit regularly.
Businesses are being urged to sort out how they get consent so they can keep on using cookies.
The changes are demanded by the European e-Privacy directive which comes into force in the UK in late May.
The section of the directive dealing with cookies was drawn up in an attempt to protect privacy and, in particular, limit how much use could be made of behavioural advertising.
This form of marketing involves people being tracked across websites, with their behaviour used to create a profile that dictates the type of adverts they see.
As part of its work to comply with the directive, the IAB – an industry body that represents web ad firms – created a site that explains how behavioural advertising works and lets people opt out of it.
The directive demands that users be fully informed about the information being stored in cookies and told why they see particular adverts.
“It’s going to happen and it’s the law.”
Christopher Graham Information Commissioner
Specifically excluded by the directive are cookies that log what people have put in online shopping baskets.
However, the directive is likely to have an impact on the more general use of cookies that remember login details and enable people to speed up their use of sites they visit regularly.
It could mean that after 25 May, users see many more pop-up windows and dialogue boxes asking them to let sites gather data.
The exact steps that businesses have to go through to comply with the law and gain consent from customers and users are being drawn up by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
A spokesman for the DCMS said that work on the regulations was “ongoing” but would not be complete by 25 May.
In a statement, Ed Vaizey, minister for Culture, Communications and the Creative Industries, said he recognised that the delay would “cause uncertainty for businesses and consumers”.
Cookies are used by websites to save user preferences between visits.
“Therefore we do not expect the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to take enforcement action in the short term against businesses and organisations as they work out how to address their use of cookies,” he added.
Information Commissioner Christopher Graham said: “I cannot bark at the industry at the moment because I have not got the regulations.”
However, Mr Graham stressed that the government’s confession that the regulations will be delayed should not be a spur to inaction.
“My message is that this is not your ‘get out of jail free’ card,” he said.
The response to complaints about firms that flout the directive will be viewed in light of what they have done to prepare for it, continued Mr Graham.
Businesses should be considering how they will communicate with customers to get consent and look at the technical steps that might make that process easier, he explained.
Early work by the ICO suggests that gathering consent by changing settings on browsers may not be sophisticated enough for the demands of the directive.
“They have to think seriously about this,” said Mr Graham. “It’s going to happen and it’s the law.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Matthew Elliott says switching to AV would cause political uncertainty
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A referendum will be held on 5 May on whether to keep the first-past-the-post system for electing MPs or to switch to the Alternative Vote. In the run-up to polling day, the BBC is asking a variety of people to give their view: Matthew Elliott, director of the official No to AV campaign.
The Alternative Vote system would cost us £250m and install the Lib Dems as permanent kingmakers. Our country can’t afford it.
We live in uncertain economic times. At the moment people are worried about their jobs, about their mortgages, about their weekly shop. What most people aren’t worrying about is changing the voting system.
At a total cost of £250m, the Alternative Vote would pile political uncertainty on top of economic uncertainty and the only real beneficiaries of this expensive and unnecessary change would be the Liberal Democrats.
After each general election, the UK would face a Hung Parliament and we would have to wait patiently while the Lib Dems played one party off against the other behind closed doors.
Out would go manifesto commitments, on issues like tuition fees and VAT, until they had bargained their way to a policy which would benefit their party alone.
The only vote that would really count under AV would be Nick Clegg’s.
As well as giving the Lib Dems a permanent place in coalition, under the Alternative Vote the candidate coming in second or third often ends up winning the election.
Instead of MPs that take a principled stand, AV would create a legion of bland politicians that would tell you whatever you wanted to hear and ditch their promises at the first sign of trouble.
The AV is no cure to the problems in British politics; it is little more than a placebo being sold to the British people by the very people who would stand to gain from its introduction.
The question the public need to ask is: at £250m, can we afford to bring in a voting system that would turn Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats into permanent kingmakers?
If your answer is no, please vote No on 5 May 2011.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The UK media is saturated with coverage of Prince William’s forthcoming marriage to Kate Middleton. But what about those who don’t think the event is important?
You’ll have put up the bunting, then? Organised the street party? Filled your house with souvenirs and commemorative pull-out supplements?
And obviously you’ll want to read all about the happy couple? Where they’re going on honeymoon? Whether they’ve chosen canapes or sausages-on-sticks for the finger buffet?
No? What do you mean, no?
Studying much of the UK media’s coverage of the Prince William and Kate Middleton’s forthcoming wedding, you’d be forgiven for thinking that its advent had gripped the entire nation in a state of fevered, restless anticipation.
In the four months since the couple’s engagement was announced, there have been thousands of mentions of the term “royal wedding” in the UK’s national newspapers while broadcasters, including the BBC, have been equally diligent in their pursuit of the story.
Yet polls suggest the British public is not quite so uniformly receptive.
Making you feel ill?
Graphic artist Lydia Leith, 24, from Carlisle, Cumbria, says she has sold thousands of “Royal wedding sick bags”.
“We’ve heard so much about the royal wedding already and I’d heard so many people saying they were sick of it.
“I sent the sick bags out to some graphic design magazines I like and in no time it was all over Twitter.
“I did it as a joke. I never knew it was going to take off as it has.
“I’m not an anti-monarchist but it’s true that you can’t escape it. I thought I could do something with that.”
In a ComRes survey of 1,006 British adults conducted in November 2010, a clear majority said they were “not excited” by the wedding.
Of the sample, some 31% said they “couldn’t care less” about the event and a further 28% described themselves as “largely indifferent”.
Groups which call for the abolition of the monarchy acknowledge that they are in a minority, with most opinion polls putting dedicated republicans at around one-fifth of the population compared with around 70% backing the present system.
But a glance at readers’ comments below any online news story about the marriage indicates the prevalence of antipathy towards nuptial ubiquity.
Comedian Arthur Smith, best known for his curmudgeonly turns on TV’s Grumpy Old Men, is aggrieved that journalists are focusing on one matrimonial ceremony at a time of austerity at home and unrest abroad.
“What I hate most is the assumption that I care, when in fact I very much do not,” he barks.
“There are lots of important things happening right now and yet we keep hearing about it over and over again. I don’t care about my friends’ weddings, never mind theirs.
“Everyone has a royal wedding now – the average one in Britain costs about £20,000”
Bryony Gordon Daily Telegraph
“It’s the inescapability of the whole thing – you can’t get away from it even if you want to.”
Not all of those who express such sentiments are republicans or, indeed, grumpy old men like Smith.
The Daily Telegraph columnist Bryony Gordon is, in keeping with her newspaper’s editorial slant, steadfastly pro-monarchy. As a 30-year-old woman she belongs to a demographic that advertisers and editors no doubt visualise cooing over bridal gowns and wedding favours.
And yet she does believe the coverage – to which she has grudgingly contributed – has amounted to overkill, antagonising those who might otherwise be sympathetic to the House of Windsor as an institution.
Additionally, she argues that the very currency of a royal wedding has been devalued from 1981 when 28 million people watched the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Exposure of and the rise of celebrity culture may be to blame.
“It’s not like in the early 80s when the royals were the big celebrities,” she says. “Posh and Becks have usurped them. They even had thrones when they got married.
“Everyone has a royal wedding now – the average one in Britain costs about £20,000. It’s not the big deal it once was.
When royal weddings were hard news
Ann Lyon, constitutional historian, University of Plymouth
Historically, royal weddings mattered because a king or his heir would marry the daughter of another to seal an alliance.
This has a long history – it only really died out after World War I. Up until the end of the 19th Century, of course, royal marriages were arranged.
Now, whom William marries is still important because he’s the direct heir presumptive and his children will be in the direct line of succession.
But from a constitutional point of view it’s handy that Kate isn’t controversial in any way – she isn’t a divorcee or a Catholic, for instance.
“Plus, I can’t relate to Kate. I don’t know why anyone would marry into that family, for a start.”
With even such a natural royalist repelled by the blanket coverage, Palace officials might be expected to worry about its impact on support for the crown as an institution.
Indeed, on the eve of the 2010 wedding of Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria, support for the country’s monarchy slumped to its lowest-ever figure of 46%.
Graham Smith, campaign manager for the pressure group Republic, which calls for an end to the monarchy, does not expect a surge in support for an elected head of state in the run-up to 29 April.
Nor is he happy about the amount of coverage the event has so far received, having complained to the BBC for reporting it in a way which he feels has marginalised republican sentiment and insufficiently represented the fact the monarchy is a contested political institution.
But he does hope that the irritation felt by those either normally supportive of the monarchy or indifferent to its constitutional role will compel them to think carefully about the role it plays in British life.
“Politicians and the media are behind the curve,” he says. “They don’t realise that Britain has moved on. We are far less deferential as a society and as a nation.
“Although they aren’t demanding a republic, the public are small-“r” republicans in that they want to see a society of equals.
“That’s why the obligation is on the media to report it just down the line and always acknowledge the 20% who want to get rid of it all.”
Such republicans may not constitute a majority. But whatever festivities mark the wedding itself, there will be plenty of Britons celebrating when the whole thing is over.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
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