Handling Poultry & Russian Ban

Handling Poultry & Russian Ban

Handling Poultry & Russian Ban plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

One of the downsides to handling raw poultry is the threat of contamination and a recent shopping study looks at those consumer handling practices. Dr. Edgar Chambers IV with Kansas State University.

One of the objectives is to develop educational material that can either be used in store or by the cooperative extension service or other agencies to promote people being safer with poultry. In this case safer with shopping with poultry. Just getting people to focus on what are they doing and using the things that are available to them and that's what we want to ultimately get out to consumers. For example, 85% of these stores had bags available but consumers didn't always use them. Let's use them more often and we'll probably get less transfer of bacteria from one food to another.

Bans of agriculture imports a couple weeks ago by Russia has consumers already paying a price. Suppliers have raised prices for some fish by 20-36% and reported shortages and higher prices for fruit, while retailers braced for milk prices to go up, and some meat suppliers were engaging in price speculation, according to reports from Russia.  Russia is one of the world's leading importers of food, and its ban on fruit, meat, poultry, fish and milk products is hurting European suppliers, but the ban is also hurting Russians who have acquired a taste in recent years for imported European products.

Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray.

Having been raised in Kansas with a large portion of my family tree coming from Missouri I tend to keep on eye on what happens in those two states. That's why I have been following the Missouri Right to Farm Amendment, which just barely squeaked by when voters approved it this month. Interestingly, one would think that with a title like "right to farm" all those in the ag community would have been behind the amendment, but that was not the case. Even though the "right to farm" provision is focused on agriculture many of that state's farmers are worried that this could change the face of farming in their state. On one side there is the hope that this measure will protect farmers and ranchers from new restrictive laws that would outlaw safe and accepted practices they currently use. On the flip side small farming operations worry that the measure will make it harder to hold large farming operations accountable for any problems in the future. As I mentioned earlier Missouri's Right to Farm amendment passed by a very close margin, so close that there will undoubtedly be a recount - and we all know what generally happens with a recount. Needless to say, other will be closely watching what happens and carefully considering whether to attempt right to farm measures in their state.

Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.

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