Calendar Submissions & Fraud Charges

Calendar Submissions & Fraud Charges plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

The beauty of the farm is being celebrated in an award-winning calendar produced by the Oregon Farm Bureau. Anne Marie Moss, OFB Communications Director says they are currently looking for pictures for the 2012 edition.

MOSS: This year I’m trying to open it up a bit and get more shots from different parts of the state and thought I’d promote the opportunity to the public to professional or amateur photographers/hobbyists to see if they could submit a photo for this opportunity and maybe appear as a full page in the calendar.

For details got to www.oregonfb.com. The deadline for entries is August 15, 2011.

A Pasco farmer and winery owner and three other men plead innocent on Monday to federal charges related to an alleged attempt to defraud the government of insurance payments for potato crops. The indictment documents allege that from 2001-06, the four men and their companies conspired to make false reports to the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation to defraud the corporation of more than $9.5 million in insurance payments.

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

Here’s yet another incongruity about reusable shopping bags, besides a threat of trace lead in many of the major grocery chains reusable bags, now an independent report states they’re a health threat due to the likelihood of bacteria growth after small amounts of moisture from raw food items are left inside folded reusable grocery bags, which are then often used over and over again without being wiped out. Is there ever a day goes by we don’t get hammered by a new health scare. How any of us baby boomers managed to survive into our golden years is beyond me. Of course one of the really interesting little tidbits about this newest independent research report is that it was commissioned by none other than the plastics industry, the ones who make all the plastic bags now being banned. Here we are again as well meaning consumers, caught in the middle.  But before you throw away all your reusable bags and revert back to plastic, just remember, like anything else in our homes that we use daily for food prep, reusable bags should also be wiped down and cleaned more than once every few months! Voila, problem solved!

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