There’s such an avalanche of worthy links today, thought we’d break it up into several courses.
More bad news for China (and Red Lobster): In the latest move against Chinese imports, the FDA blocked the sale of five types of farm-raised seafood — including shrimp and catfish — from China because of repeated instances of contamination from unapproved animal drugs and food additives. China is the U.S.’s biggest foreign supplier of seafood. (New York Times) A Friday update says the FDA will merely hold all shipments of the restricted seafood products unless they are proven to be safe, and China said it would cooperate with regulators and even proposed its own system of testing and certifying the quality of certain food exports.
Hopefully they don’t brush that often: Roughly 900,000 tubes of Chinese-made toothpaste containing a poison used in some antifreeze products have turned up in U.S. hospitals for the mentally ill, prisons, juvenile detention centers and even some hospitals serving the general population. (New York Times)
Civics lesson: A watch-the-sausage-being-made story about the politics behind the House fight over the Food and Farm Bill budget. There is increased pressure to waive House pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) rules for the bill, so that the committee can propose major spending increases without making significant cuts to commodity payments. But that could hurt Dems’ credibility, including fiscally conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats on the committee — House Ag chair Peterson included. (New York Times via Congressional Quarterly)
Hoofbeats of the apocalypse: Enough fertile land could turn into desert within the next generation to create an “environmental crisis of global proportions,” large-scale migrations and political instability in parts of Africa and Central Asia unless current trends are quickly stemmed, a new United Nations report concludes. (New York Times)
Congressmen ask Safeway to defend selling carbon monoxide-treated meat (East Bay Business Times)
Bee deaths may cause $75 billion in losses, says Ag Sec Johanns (Chicago Tribune)
Democrats want to investigate Cheney for role in massive salmon die-off of Klamath River in Oregon (Seattle Times)
USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) gets new administrator (Press release)
Ancient farms discovered in the Andes (Reuters)
Kentucky facing a shortage of vets to treat large animals (Kentucky.com)
Food, Farming, & Food Politics events calendar
Humor:
June 30th, 2007 at 5:42 am
As always, great re-direction. Thanks again for the thought-provoking links.