Radio România Internațional

Tag: food security

  • May 19, 2022 UPDATE

    May 19, 2022 UPDATE

    Visit. The President of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, visited, on Thursday, together with the Romanian Prime Minister, Nicolae Ciuca, and the Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, the 1st Training Battalion in Caracal (south). About 200 soldiers from Portugal are training there, deployed this year in Romania to consolidate NATOs southeastern flank. President Iohannis said that Bucharest and Lisbon are successfully coordinating to strengthen defense in the Black Sea region, but also on NATOs southern flank. He recalled that in 2014, after the illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula by the Russian Federation, an extensive process of adapting the alliance to a volatile and unpredictable security environment began. Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa stressed that the conflict in Ukraine after Russias invasion on February 24th has brought about major changes in Europes security and that on that day his country approved the deployment of forces in Romania to strengthen NATOs presence on the Eastern flank. In his turn, Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca thanked Portugal for its substantial contribution to the multinational structures in Romania, but also for its participation in the measures of increased vigilance in Romania.



    Defense. France has deployed a state-of-the-art ground-to-air defense system in Romania in the face of the threats posed by the conflict in Ukraine, the General Staff of the French Armed Forces announced on Thursday. This system, called Mamba, can provide a bubble of protection for the benefit of the forces operating in the area and is, above all, meant to protect the NATO air base, which houses several thousand soldiers, explained Colonel Pascal Yanni, the French General Staff spokesperson. The French armed forces have been present in Romania since February 26.



    NATO. US President Joe Biden said on Thursday that Finland and Sweden had met all the criteria to join NATO. In a speech at the White House, alongside Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson and Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, the day after the two countries officially applied for NATO membership, Joe Biden announced that he would ask Congress to approve their candidacies “as soon as possible”. Previously reluctant to give up their historic neutrality, the two Scandinavian countries decided to join the North Atlantic Alliance after the Russian army invaded Ukraine on February 24th.



    Moldova. The European Parliament on Thursday adopted the annual report on the implementation of the EU-Moldova association agreement, which includes a call on the EU to provide more strategic support to Chisinau after applying for EU membership. According to an EP statement, in the context of a deteriorating security environment, the war in Ukraine has disproportionately affected neighboring Moldova. Its economy has been affected by the loss of import and export opportunities and the rapid rise in energy prices, and the Republic of Moldova has also received the largest number of Ukrainian refugees compared to its population than any other country, putting enormous pressure on its public services. Motivated by Russias invasion of Ukraine, the official request of Moldovas accession to the EU on March 3 has been welcomed by MEPs, as it confirms the European path of that country.



    Tennis. Romanian tennis player Irina Bara (114 WTA) will compete in the Roland Garros tournament after defeating on Thursday in qualifiers the Japanese Nao Hibino (215 WTA ), 7-6 (5), 6-4. On Friday, the Romanian player Mihaela Buzărnescu (118 WTA) will face the Swedish Mirjam Bjorklund (150 WTA) in the last round of the qualifiers for the Grand Slam. Simona Halep, Sorana Cîrstea, Gabriela Ruse, Irina Begu and Ana Bogdan are already qualified. (MI)


  • Food and Nutrition Security: one of the EU’s Top Priorities

    Food and Nutrition Security: one of the EU’s Top Priorities

    Food
    security, jointly with the improvement of farming activity through cutting-edge
    methods are among the major development priorities at EU level. The eventual
    aim is to secure consumer protection, while also providing a guarantee for the
    proper functioning of the single market. Standards have been agreed upon, enabling the hygiene
    of foodstuffs, plants and animals’ health, but also staving off contamination
    with such substances as pesticides. In-depth check-up operations are conducted,
    and imports from outside the European Union have to meet the same standards as
    the community foodstuffs. Limits have been set up for additives and the
    veterinarian and phyto-sanitary drugs that can be added to fodder, but also a rigorous system for licensing and
    selling genetically modified organisms. Roxana Morea is a press adviser of the
    European Commission’s Representation in Bucharest. She will now be explaining
    what European policy stipulates as regards food security.

    Food and nutrition security
    guarantees that everybody has access to food that is nourishing,
    cost-effective and available in acceptable quantities. Through the support provided in the field,
    the European Union actually seeks to build and strengthen its capacity to adapt
    and respond to food-related crises, providing the needed support for all
    countries, so much so that no one should face starvation. Fighting malnutrition
    is particularly vital, for children from disadvantaged categories to have the
    chance to live a healthy life, to have access to education and therefore better
    chances for building a good future. At the moment, every day, one person in
    eight dies of starvation, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. As for
    the European policy framework, it stipulates that nutrition security and sustainable agriculture are key
    priorities for the European Union, especially with regard to development
    cooperation policies.


    Until 2030,
    Brussels has set up its own food-related objectives, which include a greater
    food production, which should be cost-effective and of higher quality, as well
    as a sustainable and inclusive growth, given the present climate change conditions,
    the scarcity of natural resources and the growth of the world population. With details on that, here is Roxana Morea
    once again.


    Access to food is a challenge in itself. It is not only access that
    matters, but also the fact that the available foodstuff must be nourishing. The
    European Union policy stipulates support mainly for the developing countries,
    so that those countries, thanks to the support granted by the European Union,
    can cover the four pillars, officially recognized at the 1996 global food
    summit: availability of food resources, improved access
    to those resources, the improvement of foodstuffs’ nutritional value, as well
    as an enhanced crisis response and management capacity. To that effect, food
    security is a policy sector set at EU
    level, whereby the EU expresses its full commitment to ensuring the coherence
    of the entire development cooperation policy. In order to provide an increased
    adaptability to crises, prevention and preparation projects are important. Such
    projects target the management of cyclic risks, such as hurricanes or strong
    storms, or unpredictable vulnerabilities, such as earthquakes.


    An important chapter in the European policy on
    food security pertains to the prevention
    of diseases transmitted from animals to humans. EU regulations guarantee that
    zoonoses, such as salmonellosis or tuberculosis, are contained and only healthy
    animals and foodstuffs obtained from healthy animals are allowed access to the
    food supply chain. An equally important aspect is reducing the use of
    antibiotics in farms. Antibiotics used to make up for the disproportionate
    growth of animals and poultry resulted in an increased bacteria resistance to
    treatments for humans.

    Given that nearly
    half of the antibiotics produced at world-level are used in farms, a series of
    measures is a must, MEPs have recently ruled. They have voted a bill aimed to
    update the European Union legislation on veterinarian medicines, targeting the
    restricted use of the existing antimicrobial drugs and the creation of new
    ones. And that, taking into account that the warnings issued by the World
    Health Organization say we run the risk of getting closer to a post-antibiotics
    era, where each year antimicrobial resistance causes a greater number of deaths
    than cancer.

    The president of Romania’s Veterinarians Association Viorel
    Andronie shares his opinion on that:


    Such a specification is a
    warning signal and all decision-making bodies involved in that field should
    unite, and everyone of them should do whatever needs to be done so as to
    maximize the reduction of resistance to antibiotics. And most importantly, we should give people
    the chance to benefit from antibiotics when they need that.


    As early as
    2006, Romania banned the use of antibiotics as growth promoters.