Rolaids Recall & Child Nutrition

Rolaids Recall & Child Nutrition plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

Today the President is signing into law the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which will improve the quality of school breakfasts, lunches and other foods sold in schools while also strengthening nutrition programs that serve young children, including WIC and the Child and Adult Care Food Program. Sam Kass, Senior Policy Advisor for Healthy Food Initiatives

KASS: The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 is an absolute critical step in reducing hunger during the school day and promoting sound nutrition for all children. Increasingly we are seeing schools playing a central role in children’s health with over 31-million children who received school meals, many of these kids are receiving most, if not all of their calories at school. You’ll see in school lunch because of this legislation will include more whole grains, fat free and low fat milk, more fruits and more vegetables and this bill will help establish connections with local farms to teach kids where food comes from and how it grows and to strengthen those connections and help support local economies.

If you use ROLAIDS® Extra Strength Softchews, Cherry Flavor in the 36 count package you will want to know that the FDA has initiated a voluntary recall as a precaution following consumer complaints of an uncharacteristic consistency or texture, traced to crystallized sugar in the product.

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

California sea lions, protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and residing below Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River are not familiar with the term “don’t bite the hand that feeds you”, or in this case, the hand that saved you. Environmentalists and other critics prefer to point fingers at the dams themselves, human invasion, and pollution as the main culprits in the reduction of salmon numbers, but the fact that these sea lions are killing and eating thousands of endangered salmon and steelhead cannot be ignored or brushed off. The sea lion situation needs to be addressed as much or more than any of the other listed threats. But apparently, it is one of those highly publicized issues no one wants to deal with or be associated with, since a Court of Appeals recently rerouted the issue back to National Marine Fisheries Service officials for consideration on whether to re-authorize the removal and destroying of individual sea lions identified as overly voracious predators. In the meantime, while these two governing bodies bat this issue back and forth, salmon will remain on the menu for the sea lions.

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