Getting Ready for Fireworks & Food Safety Plans

Getting Ready for Fireworks & Food Safety Plans plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

If you haven’t noticed, tents have gone up all across the northwest with brightly colored signs advertising for fireworks. Is it legal to light fireworks in your area? You will need to check with your county to see but regardless one thing everyone needs to keep in mind is safety. Be extremely cautious of lighting fireworks in very dry areas and of course well away from any flammable materials. Better yet, why not just make plans to attend your local cities fireworks display.

Speaking of safety. Under Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety Dr. Elisabeth Hagen discusses the reasons behind the new food safety ad campaign.

HAGEN: We’re doing this campaign because 1 in 6 Americans gets sick from food-borne illness every year. That’s way too many people who get sick from something as simple as the food they put on their tables, so we are in charge of bringing those numbers down. We partner with our sister agency, FDA, every single day to put policies in place that will make food as safe as possible before it reaches consumers. But if we’re really going to bring those numbers down we have to be looking at every opportunity along the way and that means looking at what consumers can do in their own homes.

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

Potato growers received a pleasant surprise recently when the House passed a provision in their agriculture appropriations bill which prevents the USDA from moving forward with their plans to reduce the amount of potatoes school’s can use in their breakfast and lunch programs. The fact that the provision still needs to be passed by the Senate in no way lessens the excitement felt by the potato industry over this unexpected defending of the nutritionally sound potato. What appears to have helped the potato’s cause is the increased cost to school districts if the USDA’s proposal were to succeed; a whopping $6.8 billion over five years! Also, the health benefits of the potato have been brought to the forefront in the press lately by such actions as Washington Potato Commission Executive Director Chris Voigt’s two month “all potato diet”, where he managed to not only loose weight, but improve his over all health in the process; proof positive that the USDA’s decision to remove the potato from their federal programs and school cafeterias isn’t based on nutritional fact, but is more seemingly based on an attitude of bias.

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