-The Telegraph New Delhi: Regulatory efforts to get doctors in India to prescribe medicines only through their generic names, initiated about 15 years ago, will need to overcome legal challenges and resistance from sections of doctors and the pharmaceutical industry, experts said. Senior pharmacologists and industry analysts have also said it will be misleading to presume that prescriptions with generic names will automatically translate into lower medicine bills for patients as studies...

-The Hindu Business Line Karnataka, the first State to formulate an organic farming policy way back in 2004, has stepped up measures to spread the concept among farmers in recent years. Also, it has been working on rebuilding farmers’ interest in millets through incentives such as guaranteed buy-back and a bonus over the minimum support price. To provide market linkages to the over 1 lakh organic farmers in the State, the Karnataka government...

-TheWire.in Inaction of state government to regulate abattoirs in the past cannot be a shield for imposing “a state of almost prohibition” on meat, says Allahabad high court. Noting that food habits are an essential part of UP’s secular culture, the Allahabad high court held that food and trade in foodstuff is constitutionally guaranteed under the right to live. The Lucknow bench of the high court was ruling on a petition brought...

-The Times of India AGRA: From transporting meat only in insulated freezer vans to health certificates for all workers, from forbidding meat shops near religious places and vegetable markets to strict FSDA compliance, the UP government has sent out an elaborate list of dos and don'ts for meat shop owners. The list of necessary infrastructure is so exhaustive, said meat shop owners, that most retailers will have to down shutters permanently. However,...

-Business Standard Huge arrivals from Gujarat and MP increase supply; farmers fear higher spoilage on rise in temp Mumbai:  Vegetables prices crashed in the last two weeks due to farmers’ rush for sale on fears of high spoilage due to sudden rise in temperature across the country. Data compiled by the government owned National Horticulture Board (NHB) showed cauliflower in the wholesale Mumbai mandi slumped by a staggering 25% since March 17 to...