01/30/09 Salmonella Problems & Easing Restrictions

Salmonella Problems & Easing Restrictions. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Agriculture hopes to capitalize on plans by President Obama to ease travel and other restrictions on Cuba. Obama wants to ease restrictions on Cuban American cash remittances, visits and care packages. House Ag Republican Jerry Moran of Kansas wrote to Obama after his election last year - asking him to reverse the 2005 Bush Treasury rules requiring cash before ag shipments to Cuba. American Farm Bureau Trade Specialist Chris Garza says banking restrictions in a 2000 Cuba trade reform bill also complicated U.S.-Cuba trade. MORAN: Right now Cuba has to go through a third country bank whether they are paying cash or whether they're using these letters of credit. You know what we'd really like to see which will help to improve ourselves to Cuba is just direct banking between Cuba and the United States. Officials at the FDA and the CDC, say Peanut Corporation of American has found salmonella a dozen times during the past two years. And, according to the same officials, PCA sold the products anyway, even after receiving negative results from a different laboratory. Companies are not required to disclose their internal tests to either the FDA or state regulators, so health officials did not know of the problem. Federal investigators said they have found four strains of salmonella at the Georgia plant, including one in a sample taken from the floor near a washroom. Now here's today's Washington Grange Report. (GRANGE) That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.