Two Dutch men have appeared at a closed hearing before Overijssel District Court in the Dutch city of Zwolle in relation to the contaminated egg scandal that has swept across Europe and beyond, leading to the temporary closure of several hundred farms and the recall of millions of raw eggs and products containing eggs from supermarket shelves.

The European Commission is to propose revising a 2008 egg marketing regulation (589/2008) to allow eggs from hens kept indoors for up to 16 weeks because of a bird flu or other disease outbreak to continue to be labelled as ‘free range’.

EU Health and Food Safety Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis reassures MEPs that Japanese rice and other food exports to Europe are not a radioactive risk in his latest response to a written question.  Answering the question from two Green MEPs, Luxembourg’s Claude Turmes and France’s Michèle Rivasi, Andriukaitis underlined that Japan’s maximum limits for radiation are stricter than those in place in the EU so there is “no need” to revise authorised levels on imports.

The number of countries known to have been affected by eggs contaminated with the insecticide fipronil has increased to 17, including one outside of Europe. EU health and food safety Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis has said a meeting to discuss the crisis will be held on September 26^th as police in the Netherlands reveal they have arrested two people in connection with the contamination.

The European Commission said today that the farms in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France affected by the fipronil-contaminated egg scandal will not be reopened for business until they are all compliant with EU maximum residue levels for pesticides. Ten countries are affected by the contaminated egg scandal and millions of eggs and egg-related products are being removed from supermarket shelves.

The European Commission has given permission for silicon dioxide (E551) to be used as an anti-caking agent in potassium nitrate (E252). Potassium nitrate is frequently used by the food industry to cure and preserve meats against microbial agents and to maintain the desired colour of meats and hard cheeses.

The European Commission said today that the farms in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France affected by the fipronil-contaminated egg scandal will not be reopened for business until they are all compliant with EU maximum residue levels for pesticides. Ten countries are affected by the contaminated egg scandal and millions of eggs and egg-related products are being removed from supermarket shelves.

A western Swedish slaughterhouse has been closed by the Swedish National Food Adminstration after having sold uncontrolled horse meat with counterfeit labeling. Three tons of sausages containing the meat have been withdrawn from the market.

The Dutch food safety authority, the NVWA, has said it will be testing chicken meat for traces of the insecticide fipronil, a substance that is banned from use as a veterinary medicine or pesticide around food producing animals, but has been found to be illegally used to clean chicken farms in Belgium.

Turkish regulations on food labelling came into force in January of this year, aligning the country’s food labelling laws with those of the EU’s Food Information to Consumers Regulation (1169/2011). But companies have a transitional period to adapt to the new rules.

EU customs have reported a worrying hike in the number of fake food and drink and other ‘everyday’ items seized at the bloc’s borders last year.

Importers now have to verify foreign suppliers are meeting the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), so companies will be looking more closely at FDA compliance data to meet that verification task, said speakers at the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) meeting in Tampa last week.

Manufacturers of breakfast cereals in the UK have come under fire this week by campaign group Action on Sugar for "deliberately" confusing shoppers over the sugar content of their products. Action on Sugar says that the colour coding or “traffic light” labelling scheme is being used in differing ways across products, making consumers unsure whether some products contain unhealthy sugar levels.

A group of Romanian lawmakers has submitted a draft bill that would introduce a UK-style traffic light food labelling scheme.

India’s food safety regulator is working on guidelines for the labelling of packaged food containing genetically modified ingredients.

A key EU committee has unanimously decided that the food packaging chemical bisphenol A (BPA) is an endocrine disruptor.

The Polish ministry of agriculture has notified the European Commission on its draft food labelling ordinance which introduces a number of amendments to the ministry’s regulation from 23 December, 2014.

As interest in the use of nanotechnology-enabled food contact materials continues to grow, scientists at the US FDA are studying the extent to which nanoparticles in such materials are likely to migrate from food packaging into food products.

The European Commission has given permission for potassium carbonate (E501) to be used on peeled, cut and shredded fruit and vegetables to prevent the food browning and causing food waste.

The European Commission has given permission for silicon dioxide (E551) to be used as an anti-caking agent in potassium nitrate (E252). Potassium nitrate is frequently used by the food industry to cure and preserve meats against microbial agents and to maintain the desired colour of meats and hard cheeses.

Xanthan gum (E415) poses no safety concerns when used at current levels, according to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which checked out the food additive under the EU’s rolling re-evaluation programme for substances on the market before 2009.