Health Care & What is Dairy Doing

Health Care & What is Dairy Doing plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Here we are into a new year and the question is still, what about dairy? While dairy herd reductions have slowed down, production per cow remains the same, which has led to USDA forecasts of more milk and lower than expected prices in 2010 according to World Agricultural Outlook Board Chair Gerry Bange. BANGE: I believe this may be our first forecast in which we've got 2010 actually above 2009 in terms of production; we're up about a tenth of a percent. I think the industry had been in hopes of sort of constraining production, if not reducing production a little bit. At the same time we have not changed our output per cow number therefore we had to go up on our estimate. Republicans are crying foul and even some Democrats are wondering what is next after a weekend session that brought national healthcare to a head with a close vote of 219 to 212 to send the legislation to the President who is sure to sign it. The 10-year, $938 billion bill would extend coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans, reduce deficits and ban insurance company practices such as charging more to women and denying coverage to people with medical problems. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray. A lie of omission is still a lie. What the majority of us learned in grade school a large percentage of major food companies are finding out the hard way. The Food and Drug Administration sent out warning letters to food companies regarding their deceptive food labeling practices. Example, labels that tout "0 grams trans fat" while disregarding the fact the product contains more than fifteen grams of total fat; five of those being saturated fat grams. Or "made with whole wheat" when the product actually contains only an infinitesimal amount of whole wheat. Then there's always the "Made with Real Fruit" claim. The number of products that abuse this one is staggering. Just be aware, if the dietary exchange on the label lists out as carbohydrate and fat but not fruit, you probably don't want to buy it for its nutritional fruit value. And as I have mentioned here before the food label claim of "Natural" means about as much as the claim that Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield were "natural blondes". Processed foods are the main target now but even whole foods need to be careful of excessive health claims, the FDA may determine that therapeutic claims transform those foods into drugs. Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.