News

On 05/09/2019, the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered a judgment on the spread of Xylella fastidiosa in Italy. According to the Court of Justice, Italy has failed to comply with its obligation to take measures to prevent the spread of that bacterium, which may cause the death of a large number of plants, in particular olive trees. In 2015, the European Commission instructed EU Member States affected by the spread of bacteria to remove all trees at a given distance from a confirmed outbreak, even if the trees around the outbreak did not show signs of bacterial attack. However, Italy did not follow the European Commission's guidelines in 2017 and did not cut over 800 trees near the outbreaks. Moreover, according to the Court, Italy did not regularly monitor the spread of the bacteria.
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A team of scientists from Herriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, after five years of research, isolated the HvMYB1 gene, which is believed to be responsible for the barley's resistance to water scarcity and allows it to grow during drought. This is an important discovery that could help develop drought-resistant crops in the future.
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Agrochemical Company ChemChina & Syngenta bought digital agricultural company Cropio. In the EU, the Cropio innovation system is focused on Eastern Europe, the dashboard and applications are already used to manage about 10 million hectares of land around the world. The system enables farmers to monitor their agricultural land remotely and helps to improve farmers' sustainability, productivity, efficiency and profitability.

Last Week, Finnish Minister of Agriculture Jari Leppä said that the Amazon forest fire should to some extent be seen as an effort to expand the area of agricultural land in Brazil, which should warn all supporters of the draft trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur - fires and deforestation in the Amazon may, according to the Finnish Minister, be directly linked to this trade agreement. According to Leppä, such effects of the agreement are inadmissible. The Finnish Minister therefore proposes to impose strict restrictions on the import of soya and beef from Mercosur countries into the EU.

Ukraine objected to Latvia's request to the European Commission to introduce necessary consumer protection measures against the import of Ovostar's Ukrainian eggs after four Salmonella warnings had been sent to the EU Rapid Alert System (RASFF) since April 2019. Ukraine confirmed negative results in secondary tests, pointing out that not only the Ukrainian national authorities, but also an EU-accredited laboratory confirmed the safety of Ukrainian eggs. Latvia also criticized the fact that Ukraine has not adopted EU phytosanitary or EU animal welfare standards in line with the 2017 EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.