News on The Potato Supply Chain from Belgium

Dutch Packaging equipment manufacturer Manter International BV highlights two of their new multihead weighers, the MD16 and the M12V at the upcoming Interpom | Primeurs.

Belgium transport and storage solutions specialist Deprez Construct NV uses the upcoming Interpom | Primeurs to showcase their potato storage box handling solutions, such as the 'Octopus mobile' box washer.

The Austrian optical sorting equipment manufacturer Insort GmbH will highlight its Chemical Imaging Technology applied in their Sherlock Separator for the potato industry at the Interpom | Primeurs.

The 16th edition of INTERPOM PRIMEURS will be held from Sunday 25 to Tuesday 27 November 2012 in Kortrijk Xpo (Belgium). With the new record number of 255 exhibitors and the entire filling of the exhibition complex at Kortrijk Xpo, INTERPOM PRIMEURS ...

The Belgapom price for potatoes for processing (Bintje) established weekly in Belgium last friday hit its highest level of this year. The price was over ten times the price last year. "The Belgapom quotation is the most frequently used price obs...

Intake of foods high in acrylamide during pregnancy is associated with lower birth weight and smaller head circumference. This was revealed in an international study of the diet of 1,100 pregnant women and newborns from Denmark, England, Greece, Norway...

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published its annual update report on acrylamide levels in food in 25 European countries. Acrylamide is a chemical contaminant produced during food processing. The report covers the monitoring period 2007-2...

The European Potato Processors Association (EUPPA) general assembly has approved yesterday new statutes and elected a new board at its meeting in Brussels earlier this week. The EUPPA member companies actively process potatoes in Austria, Belgium, Fra...

The European Food Safety Authority has concluded that a recent paper raising concerns about the potential toxicity of genetically modified (GM) maize NK603 and of a herbicide containing glyphosate is of insufficient scientific quality to be considered ...

The North-western European Potato Growers (NEPG) estimate the potato yield in the participating countries (Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) will be 22.99 million tonnes. This is down 14.5% compared to last season.

La salud del corazón de millones de europeos aún se encuentra en riesgo debido al alto contenido de ácidos grasos trans de algunos alimentos rápidos y procesados. Aunque los niveles globales han disminuido, pocos países tienen una limitación legal en l...

Sustainable potato production across the EU could be under threat from potato cyst nematodes (PCN) and free living nematodes (FLN) without a comprehensive review of sampling and management options.

The potato market is very successful at the moment. "The demand is at a high level and the prices are good,"says Karel Casteels from Lathouwers &Co. "We didn't expect it at first, but it is a lot busier than last year."He believ...

Last week, the North-western European Potato Growers (NEPG) provided an update on the potato acreage in NW Europe (Belgium, Germany, France the Netherlands and the United Kingdom). For all five countries, official potato acreages now have been published...

One year after the protest against the test fields for GM potatoes in Ghent, the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) has been given the green light for a second phase of research.

The following is a commentary published this week in Nature, on the GMO situation in Europe, focused on potatoes:

The Belgian potato-processing industry continued to grow in 2011 for its entire product segment, as shown by the annual production data published by Belgapom, the Belgian federation of the potato trade and processing sector. This growth is above all tr...

The European Commission has approved a list of 222 health claims for food products. Health claims on food labelling and in advertising, for example on the role of calcium and bone health or vitamin C and the immune system, have become vital marketing tools.