Eating contaminated animal products is safe?
Melamine, an industrial chemical used in pesticides and plastics has been giving pork and chicken producers quite a scare during the past couple weeks. According to an article by J.M. Hirsch in Agweek, scraps left over from a manufacturer of dog and cat food was used to make feed for pork and chicken producers.
Unfortunately, producers didn’t know that the product was contaminated with melamine. Prior to testing, the FDA and USDA have both lifted the quarantine on pork and chicken and declared it safe for human consumption.
To be quite honest, I’m not supportive of this move on the FDA or USDA’s parts. Testing may be coming back clear right now, but until they hold these animals under quarantine for at least a couple more weeks, I don’t feel they are ready for human consumption.
According to Hirsch’s article, an outbreak of melamine in March was responsible for a wave of dog and cat deaths. The FDA started an investigation and around 100 pet food manufacturers were recalled from stores. The FDA claims tests have only shown a very small amount of melamine in chickens and hogs given this feed. The exposure was thousands of times lower than the level considered safe.
I understand that the levels were very low; however, I strongly feel that the FDA and USDA are rushing into getting these products on the market to quickly. Even if they are confident that the contamination amounts are low, they should still be holding the livestock for a couple more weeks to ensure 100 percent human safety.
I’m not trying to be a difficult consumer by holding this opinion. I consider myself to be a huge advocate to anything agricultural, especially livestock. So my concern is if I am this worried about health safety, how are people who are already unsure about animal products going to respond. Americans already have enough on their minds with the BSE outbreaks and spinach contaminations that have occurred over the last three years.
I found myself even more shocked after an article by Christopher Bodeen in Agweek reported that China actually encouraged the use of melamine in animal products until recently. Even though the chemical doesn’t hold any nutritional value, its used because it has increased amounts of nitrogen.
I am relieved to hear that the U.S. Agriculture Department is trying to develop an independent food safety agency . In most cases, the Agriculture Department is in control of monitoring all meat and poultry and the FDA is in charge of most other food inspection. I feel this causes a rift in the lines of communication between the two and when something goes wrong with a contamination scare, both departments are running around in a tizzy.
I’m not trying to aid in making things difficult for the FDA or USDA, I believe they are very knowledgeable about these types of problems. I just feel like they are being pushed by producers to get pork and chicken to market so they can get paid instead of taking the proper amount of time to ensure the safety of consumers. It could end of saving everyone a lot of money in the long run, if for some reason melamine causes an outbreak of contamination in consumers.
Posted by: alissalick on 5/11/2007 at 10:19 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Van Wilder 2: The Rise oF Taj, fails to impress
When I sat down to watch Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj, I have to be honest I was pretty excited. After all I am the biggest Van Wilder fan in the Fargo and I’ve seen the first movie at least fifteen times. To my surprise it felt like a bad sitcom that wouldn’t end and a disgraceful remake of the first movie.
Kal Penn, who plays the role of Taj Mahal Badalandabad, transfers from Coolidge College to Camford University in England. To give you a brief background, Taj meets lead character Van Wilder (Ryan Reynolds) in the first Van Wilder movie, as a foreign exchange student hoping to be taught the art of "women."
Now Taj is off trying to make it on his own at Camford University, except the fraternity, Fox and Hounds, is full of snotty rich kids trying to prevent him from succeeding at college. As most romance storylines go, Taj falls deeply in love with Charlotte Higginson, (Lauren Cohan) who just happens to be dating the president of Fox and Hounds, Pipp Everett, the Earl of Gray. (Anyone else seeing a pattern from the first movie?)
Taj is forced to live in a rundown dorm with five other outcasts where he decides to form his own fraternity, the Cock N’ Bulls. The rest of the movie is scene after scene of Cock N’ Bulls dueling it out with Fox and Hounds to win the coveted Hastings Cup.
The movie fell short in its plot line very early on, and showed a number of scenes that were simply mimics of popular scenes from Van Wilder. It lacks the raw humor that the first movie captured effortlessly. I felt like someone should’ve been holding a sign that said, "laugh", every time something was suppose to be funny.
The movie was placed under the genre, comedy/romance, but I felt it was simply taking all the everyday sexual puns that people use and tried to make them funny again. The romance scenes in the movie made me feel like I were watching a cast of rookies trying to act out a high school play.
I was always looking for a little more excitement in each scene but the entire film was very predictable and dry. According to yahoomovies.com, The Rise of Taj was # 72 in the "Bottom100 List" of lowest user rated movies. In my opinion, if your going to try and make a sequel to a movie as funny as Van Wilder, it would be smart to put quite a bit of thought into the movies humor.
Good luck to Director Mort Nathan the next time he tries to cover-up bad acting with an English accent .
Posted by: alissalick on 4/27/2007 at 9:17 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
North Dakota winds are good for something
As always, I took time out of my busy week to check up on the current agricultural news in Agweek. This week’s eye-catching story was about wind energy. Now I can’t go as far as saying I know a lot about wind energy, but I do know enough to think that it’s worth the trouble to develop.
In the article, “Wind energy could supplement hydro power,” a South Dakota representative said because of low water levels, energy from hydro power plants is getting too expensive for consumers to pay for. Unfortunately as a result of wind energy being such an elementary principle, many investors aren’t confident enough to put money into the potential energy source.
According to the article in Agweek, tests that are suppose to prove that wind energy is a reliable source were suppose to be ready in 2006 and still haven’t been completed yet. Although I can see how investors may be a little nervous to jump into such a recently developed project, but wind energy has been taking the Dakotas by storm over the last five years. Both states have proven they are windy enough to support the high demand needed to make wind power worth our time. I think the worst-case scenario possible is discovering a great backup source of energy.
Now I’m not positive of all the locations of wind fields in North Dakota, but I have seen two fairly decent sized locations with my own eyes. The first wind field I have ever laid eyes on was located near Edgeley, N.D. It was absolutely fascinating to see so many windmills scared across the prairie. The next field that I saw was one of the most recently built fields in North Dakota and is between Wilton, N.D. and Bismarck, N.D. I’ve also seen individual farms in rural areas have one or two windmills set up right along side their farmyards.
Although this new energy process is gradual, I hope N.D. keeps building new wind farms around the state and prove to these investors just how important and beneficial this new form of energy could be. Getting away from the traditional ways of collecting energy will help us become more environmentally safe and more economical.
South Dakota just needs to keep pushing for investors to take a closer look at the idea. Steps need to be taken to rush the research along so that there is scientific and written proof that even if wind energy can’t be a main source of energy, it can definitely be a great back-up source of energy.
South Dakota Senator, John Thune, said that if used correctly, wind energy could provide extra electricity through existing transmission lines when water levels are lacking. Thune also said that there is no reason why North and South Dakota shouldn’t be able to produce enough wind energy to make building wind farms worth our time.
By working together with S.D., both states should be able to develop a fairly adequate number of wind farms to help lower the cost of energy and help prevent dangers to the environment.
Posted by: alissalick on 4/20/2007 at 8:49 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
New Food Contamination Rules
In the last couple years, vegetable producers have had some problems keeping contamination out of their products. Some of the more well-known produce that has been on the chopping block lately for contamination includes lettuce and spinach. Many grocery stores and restaurants were forced to prohibit spinach from reaching the customer for a number of weeks and producers all over the country lost thousands of dollars.
As a server at Granite City, I remember how difficult is was for our chefs to prepare food without adding spinach, as it is a popular filler in many dishes. The FDA has finally begin to place regulations on the farmers who produce these green, leafy vegetables. All I have to say is its about time.
Between the contaminated spinach outbreak this winter and the contaminated lettuce scare in some Taco Bell restaurants, rules are finally being implemented in some of the major vegetable producing states. California, one of the highest producers of crops such as lettuce and spinach, will be one of the first states to bring these new rules into effect.
Two separate articles in Agweek, describe some of the changes that farms will have to bring into effect. According to one article, from November through January, over 500 people had serious illness as a result of green leaf contamination. Almost five people actually died as a result of these contaminations as well. Most of these contaminations occurred in restaurants, which leaves these restaurants liable for being sued.
Putting laws into effect can help cut down on these problems. Most of the contaminations were traced back to ground water problems in fields. Cattle ranches that were located near lettuce and spinach farms caused manure contamination. These leafy products are packaged up and sent to hundreds of restaurants, grocery stores and into the homes of hundreds of people.
I can remember back in around December of 2006, all of Granite City’s spinach had to be removed as well as some spring greens. These are main items in salad dishes and fillers in many sandwiches, burgers and wraps. Customers became angry that their food wasn’t prepared with the ingredients they were paying for. Granite City lost a great deal of money. Then, after the spinach and lettuce were finally brought back into the store after the problem was solved, many customers were to scared to eat it again.
The restaurant went from having no lettuce or spinach to having a lot go to waste because customers were asking to have it removed from their meals. Large farms should make sure that there are no chances of contamination before planting their crops. Now that these new laws have been put into effect, I can only hope that contamination will occur less.
A few rules that have come into affect include sanitization of restrooms located in fields for workers. Worker hygiene is also being watched as well to ensure that the product is clean from the moment it is packaged up until the moment it hits someone’s burger at a restaurant or distributed to grocery stores.
Hopefully green leaf contamination will be a problem of the past.
Posted by: alissalick on 4/15/2007 at 8:31 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Farming traditions stay strong
Back in the day, it was every farming parents dream to have their children grow up and move back to the farm or start up a farm of their own. As time passed, farming became a hard job to making a living off of. As I skimmed through the stories in Agweek, I came across one story that really stood out.
"Energy and Youth," is an article about a 22-year-old who has started up his own feedlot. He’s using waste by-products from ethanol plants to help feed his herd of around 2,500 head.
For me, seeing someone young trying to keep an agricultural practice alive is reassuring and motivating.
In addition to this young adult making it on his own in a very competitive line of work, Chase Dewitz has also taken a common feedlot practice and modernized it by using waste products from food plants and by-products from ethanol plants.
Dewitz has recently begun using waste onions from a onion processing plant in Dawson, N.D. as well as liquid corn syrup from an ethanol plant in S.D. The corn syrup is actually 45 percent dry matter and is stored in a large tank that Dewitz built himself.
A ground corn diet is also fed to the herd on a regular basis, all which Dewitz does himself with the help of a few farm hands. It is such an accomplishment for a young adult in the world today, to not only be one of the youngest feedlot owners in the Midwest, but also to develop such a high-energy, efficient feeding program.
Many times when farm kids grow up, they run as far away from their farm roots as possible. Many of them may try to find Ag-related work in a larger city, however the main farming practices are left for the parents to cope with.
Farming prices are low, and it really is hit or miss when it comes to how well your harvest is going to be. Weather, prices and labor are all factors that can make it difficult for a farm to survive.
Market prices, disease and weather play the same role in the livestock industry as well. Unstable prices make it hard to pay the bills at hand and still have enough to live a regular life. I give kudos to Dewitz for taking the initiative to go out and try to make his mark on an industry that I see many students getting talked out of going into.
Agricultural traditions can only stay alive if our generation steps up to the plate.
Posted by: alissalick on 3/30/2007 at 11:06 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink