Import Food News

United Nations and Russian officials warned on Tuesday against any attack by Saudi-led coalition forces on the Houthi-held Yemeni port of Hodeidah, the aid lifeline for a country where millions of people are in desperate need of food. The warring factions must ensure deliveries of food and medical aid to starving people, senior U.N. officials said at a donor conference in Geneva. Nearly $1.1 billion has now been pledged towards a United Nations appeal of $2.1 billion for Yemen this year, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced, calling it a "remarkable success". "Across Yemen, hunger and malnutrition have reached unprecedented levels and the threat of famine looms large.

Yemeni government forces and their Arab allies are massing north and south of the Houthi-held Red Sea port of Hodeidah despite United Nations and aid groups warnings that a military operation there would put millions of civilians at risk. Hodeidah port and province is controlled by the Iran-aligned Houthis and has been the entry point for 70 percent of Yemen's food supplies as well as humanitarian aid. The country has been torn by more than two years of civil war that pits the armed Houthi group against the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which is backed by a Saudi-led Arab alliance. More than 10,000 people have been killed in the conflict and hunger is widespread.

Venezuelan state agencies have run up close to $1 billion in debts with shipping firms due to delays in returning containers, potentially boosting the cost of importing staple goods as the country struggles with product shortages and an economic crisis. The agencies have held containers for months or simply never returned them, at times leaving the truck-sized steel boxes for years in oil industry facilities or on provincial farms even though this costs $100 per day per container, according to industry sources. The debts have piled up over the last six years, coinciding with a steady rise in the role of state agencies in importing goods to Venezuela, particularly food. The country is served by industry giants such as Maersk of Denmark and Hamburg Sud of Germany.

A ship carrying enough U.N. food aid to feed 180,000 people for a month docked at the Yemeni port of Aden on Tuesday, having waited for almost four weeks, a World Food Programme spokesman said. Aden and the other southern provinces of Yemen have been largely inaccessible to U.N. food aid, and around 13 million people - over half the population - are thought to be in a situation of "critical" or "emergency" food insecurity. "It's the first WFP chartered ship to berth in the port since the conflict erupted in late March," spokesman Peter Smerdon said. Last week WFP negotiated the entry of a convoy of food trucks into Aden province, but said docking a ship was impossible because of fighting raging around the port area.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) promulgated a final regulation requiring establishment and maintenance of records by persons who manufacture, process, transport, distribute, hold, or import food in the United States. The rule comes into effect on February 5, 2005, except for small businesses where the effective date is June 9, 2005, except for very small businesses where the effective date is December 11, 2006. This is a lengthy (95 page) and complex rulemaking, but it appears that maritime carriers transporting food into the United States as cargo either may directly comply with its recordkeeping provisions or may enter into an agreement with the nontransporter immediate subsequent recipient located in the United States to establish and maintain the required records.