A European Food Safety Authority investigation into an outbreak of Listeriosis in ham in Switzerland in 2011 found that the problem arose in the slicing and packing and not in the production.

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According to the latest census of Swiss farm animals, the country continues to have more chickens than people.

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A laboratory in Switzerland discovered traces of pork in seven out of twenty tests carried out on kebabs sold in various cities, according to shocked local Muslim authorities.

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The scandal of horse meat being labeled and sold as beef is “unforgivable,” said Paul Bulcke, chief executive officer of Nestle, S.A., Vevey, Switzerland.

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Nestles are claiming their meat products are safe, if that was the case why did they not know horsemeat was in the product.

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Swiss pork producers can have their dead pigs checked for the presence of the African Swine Fever (ASF) virus.

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AB Vista appoints Provet new Swiss distributor

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Switzerland consumed 53.7 kilograms of meat per capita last year, and poultry rose to second place on the meat leader board.

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After researchers in the United States and the Netherlands each created mutated forms of the H5N1 influenza virus that could spread among humans, biosecurity concerns triggered officials with the World Health Organization to extend a moratorium to prevent the release of specific details of the research.

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The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) received an immediate notification yesterday, 11 January 2012. The outbreak was first observed on 4 January and confirmed on the same date.

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Five Mexican soccer players testing positive for clenbuterol before the Gold Cup will not face sanctions after all since the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) ruled the tests were caused by contaminated meat, according to The Associated Press. On Oct. 12, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said it had dropped its appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, where it planned to challenge a Mexico Football Federation decision clearing the players of doping.

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President Barack Obama’s administration on Tuesday fired back at World Bank President Robert Zoellick’s criticism that it has not done enough to bring the nearly decade-old Doha round of world trade talks to a successful close.

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The World Trade Organization just ruled against the United States again. A "dispute resolution panel" of WTO representatives from Pakistan, Portugal and Switzerland ruled that U.S. laws requiring Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) violate free trade.

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GENEVA — The president of the World Bank criticized the United States on Monday for its lack of leadership in pushing through a new global trade agreement that he said would boost economic growth.

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Elanco Committed to Work with Regulatory Authorities, Scientific Experts and the Food Chain to Advance Acceptance of Ractopamine

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Elanco is disappointed that Codex held at Step 8 the global food safety standards for ractopamine hydrochloride. It is critical to note that the human safety of meat from food animals fed ractopamine has been confirmed three times by Codex’s own scientific advisory committee, the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), and by 27 regulatory authorities from around the world.1, 2, 3 Elanco will continue to work with regulatory authorities, scientific experts and producers to advance the acceptance of ractopamine globally. Source: Dennis Erpelding, director, corporate affairs of Elanco

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A Swiss non-governmental organisation is trying to encourage citizens to halve their meat consumption – an initiative the industry is finding hard to swallow.

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Rhenovia enters into a strategic alliance with Portmann Instruments for marketing its biosimulation services in Switzerland. The two companies have signed a strategic agreement covering the promotion of Rhenovia’s drug optimization technologies on the Swiss and German markets.

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For the first time the term “Deadlock” is being used in the Doha Development Agenda negotiations. WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy says he plans to consult delegations in Geneva and ministers around the world in the search for a different way of achieving a breakthrough. Mr. Lamy, who chairs the Trade Negotiations Committee, says he will report back to the membership at the next meeting on May 31.

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Allaying fears on future of Doha round of WTO talks that are on the brink of collapse, India on Tuesday said that developing countries are committed to ensure that the hard work put in by them in the decade-long negotiations did not go waste.

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The World Trade Organization has a long history of anti-American actions. They've just handed us another one, and in the process handed a big freebie to Chinese state capitalism.

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Representatives of 153 nations and regions will meet in Geneva this week to try and salvage one of the longest and most laborious trade negotiations in modern times. For almost a decade, the World Trade Organization has been trying to lower trade barriers for thousands of goods and services, and now a self-imposed deadline is looming at the end of this year. But whether the WTO succeeds or not will make little difference to most people; indeed, trade negotiations would actually go much further if the WTO simply closed down its talks altogether.

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Green Cross International (GCI) and Giorgio Armani are partnering to promote access to safe drinking water through GCI’s Smart Water for Green Schools project in Ghana. A comprehensive support and solidarity network has been devised around Acqua di Gio and Acqua di Gioia, two of Giorgio Armani’s fragrances

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Vevey, Switzerland-based food giant Nestle has suspended producing its Herta halal products in France after a laboratory there found traces of pork in sausages labeled as made from chicken, Reuters reported, quoting a company spokeswoman.

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Export restrictions are a prime cause of current and recent surges in global food prices, and countries should find other ways to secure domestic supplies, the head of the World Trade Organization said on Saturday.

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The researchers recommend precautionary measures for scientific labs, slaughterhouses and animal feed plants.

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Rich investors are gearing up for another leg in the commodities bull run and looking at purchases of grain as a chance to benefit from demand for food, animal feed and biofuel, bankers and analysts said on Wednesday.

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Councillor Aebi proposed the idea of volume control earlier in the year, and on the 1st October 2010, the idea was adopted. This puts the Swiss milk producers organisation, SMP/PSL responsible for the volumes. Producers will continue to produce as much or as little milk as they like, but will pay an extra fee for any milk produced over thei contracted volume. This extra cost is to be used to market the milk globally.

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The director general of the World Trade Organisation on Thursday warned policymakers that growing currency tensions could result in the return of 1930s-style protectionism.

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"A majority of the Swiss National Council's members voted in favour of a motion that will enable milk producers to decide whether and how generally binding provisions will come into force” said Romuald Schaber, president of the European Milk Board (EMB).

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The World Trade Organization called on the U.S. Wednesday to cut its farm subsidies, saying that they were so "considerable" that they could affect market prices.

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Poultry producer, Favorit Geflügel AG, is in new hands. On 1 October, Micarna SA acquired the company in Kappelen in the canton Berne and will continue to run it as an independent business. The management of the company will continue and the position of its 50 employees are secure.

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While most US agricultural support is non-trade distorting, the size of the American farm sector means that any government support has the potential to affect world prices, according to the WTO.

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World Trade Organization (W.T.O.) economists have revised their projection for world-trade growth in 2010 up to 13.5%, following faster than expected recovery in global trade flows so far in 2010. Its March forecast was a 10% expansion in trade volumes.

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The Swiss government has granted protected status to raclette cheese produced in the Valais region of south-western Switzerland.

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Swiss pigs will have to adapt to life as vegetarians, according to World Radio of Switzerland. Their traditional delicacy of slop, otherwise known as kitchen waste and leftovers, has been banned.

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WHO Director General Margaret Chan have annonunced that the H1N1 pandemic is over, but the virus would keep circulating like a seasonal flu for years to come. Thus, the flu outbreak has been downgraded from a pandemic after influenza experts reviewed its status in previously undisclosed talks.

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400 Swiss producers gathered outside the headquarters of MIGROS in Zurich to call for fairer conditions in the milk market. BIG-M critisied in particular the approach of MIGROS in the Milk Interprofessional Organisation (BOM) which endorsed on the 18th of June 2010 a 3 Rappen (€0.02) increase in the recommended price. Due to the decision of the Federal Council, the generally binding resolutions of the BOM meant that the profit had to be passed from the dairies to the producers. However, nobody abides by the decisions of the committee, in fact there are two delegates from MIGROS on this committee.

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Participants in the Doha world trade talks are preparing for a final deal but there is no point setting an artificial deadline, the head of the World Trade Organisation told a German daily.

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More than 100 milk producers gathered on 12 July to demonstrate against the inaction of the branch organisation milk (BO Milk) regarding the dairy market situation.

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Nestlé: Famous maker of chocolate, coffee — and the world’s biggest producer of halal food for Muslims? Another surprise: that the company managed to gain market share in most business segments in a recession — largely because of the scope of its offerings.

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Green Cross International (GCI) on Africa Day announced the extension of the Smart Water for Green Schools project to four more schools in Ghana. This follows a successful pilot phase at the Al-Iman Primary School in the Bong Ahafo Region. The project extension to the additional schools will provide 2,000 school children and some 70 teachers in the five communities with access to water and better sanitation, benefiting a local population of 10,500.

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The global economic revival continues to gather pace in 2010, underpinned by surging emerging and developing economies. Many of the advanced economies continue to slowly recover, assisted by significant government spending. According to the International Monetary Funds (IMF) World Economic Outlook, released this week, the global economy is forecast to grow at 4.2% in 2010 – a sharp turnaround from the -0.6% recorded in 2009.

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The Switzerland based Buhler Technology Group achieved a turnover in 2009 of CHF 1.721 billion (€1.21 bn), and increased its profit adjusted for exchange rates by even 5% to CHF 104 million (€73.2m) despite restructuring costs and goodwill write-offs.

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Around 2 mln Swiss hens were busy up to and during Easter as consumers bought eggs to celebrate the holidays in the traditional way. Now, the appetite for eggs has returned to normal and demand has dwindled, resulting in a surplus. The problem is partially solved with the slaughtering of more hens now than is normal, reports swissinfo.ch. Additionally, the government has also lent a hand by contributing SFr2 mln ($1.87 mln) to help bring the market back on track.

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Around two million Swiss laying-hens were busy up to and during Easter as consumers bought eggs to celebrate the holidays in the traditional way, reports SwissInfo. With Easter over, the appetite for eggs has returned to normal and demand has dwindled – resulting in a surplus. The problem is to some extent solved with the slaughtering of more hens now than is normal.

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Two outbreaks of infectious bovine rhinotracheitis (IBV) were confirmed earlier this week by the Swiss Federal Veterinary Office. Since confirming the disease both infected animals were slaughtered.

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Muslims have to respect strict dietary regulations, meaning that they should only eat halal food – including meat from animals slaughtered under Islamic practice. Swiss Muslims can choose between many products bearing the halal label, but a single certification does not exist, which can lead to confusion and abuse. Those following Islam make up an estimated around 20 per cent of the world’s population or more than 1.3 billion people.

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The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that newly confirmed human and poultry cases of avian influenza this year are a reminder that the virus poses a real and continuous threat to human health. So far this year, 21 human cases of H5N1, including 7 deaths, have been reported. Of those, 16 were in Egypt (including 5 deaths), 4 in Viet Nam (including 1 death), and 1 in Indonesia (who died). So far in 2010, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, and Viet Nam have all reported outbreaks of the disease in poultry or wild bird flocks, highlighting the fact that people often are falling sick and dying in the same areas that the virus is persistently present in the environment. H5N1 is considered endemic in Egypt and parts of South East Asia.

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A research team of the 'Schweineklinik der Universität Bern' in Switzerland studied the effect of necrotic enteritis incidence on farms and the presence of Clostridium. Necrotic enteritis (NE) of newborn piglets still represents an economical problem in Swiss pig breeding and production. The aim of this study was to identify risk factors for NE and evaluate the prevalence of C. perfringens with the toxingenes cpb and cpb2 in Swiss pig breeding farms.

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BSE, bird flu, foot and mouth, bluetongue, swine flu – it’s been an active decade for animal diseases and Swiss authorities are now preparing for the next wave.

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When Swiss voters go the polls on March 7th, one of the issues they will decide is whether animals should have lawyers

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The global economic crisis has not led to a return to trade protectionism to the extent feared, but free trade remains under threat, the World Trade Organization’s director general said

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Thirteen per cent of farmers have opted out of vaccinating their livestock against bluetongue

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The World Health Organization said Thursday that its emergency panel of swine flu experts would meet this month to formally determine whether the pandemic has passed its peak

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The global economic environment is forecast to improve significantly in 2010, as positive growth returns to almost all countries, according to the latest World Economic Outlook from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

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In animal health circles, it's the equivalent of the Apollo 11 moon landing: some time in the next 18 months, the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), jointly with the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and other partners, will officially declare one of the most devastating animal diseases known to man, rinderpest, as eradicated

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During day two of the Seventh WTO Ministerial Conference in Geneva, Ministers from Australia and Pakistan called on other WTO member governments - for a political push early in the year to conclude the 8-year-old Doha Round Negotiations. They said Ministers should - get down to bridging the gaps on outstanding political questions. Some delegations called for a – roadmap- for future work. India called for discussions on “headline” issues, such as cotton, domestic support in agriculture, and “mode 4” in services.

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Ministers from a group of top farm exporting countries said Monday they were

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Nestle is the world’s leading manufacturer of Halal food with a turnover of €3.5 billion in 2008 and according to the company’s executive vice President, Frits van Dijk, there is increasing market potential for Halal products in Europe with an anticipated growth of 20-25 per cent by 2020, according to Jenny Singer from Bord Bia Frankfurt. The total European

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