Foster Farms Trouble & Specialty Crop Hearing

Foster Farms Trouble & Specialty Crop Hearing

Foster Farms Trouble & Specialty Crop Hearing plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

Foster Farms has been linked to tainted chicken. An outbreak of salmonella related illnesses in both Washington and Oregon have been linked to Foster Farms chicken. No deaths have been reported but dozens of people have been sickened. Salmonella is quite common in raw chicken and health departments in both states are reminding consumers to properly handle and cook raw chicken.

Specialty crops play an important part to the northwest farming community and USDA’s Chief Economist Joe Glauber explained to a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing that some progress is being made in making crop insurance available for more specialty crops. 

GLAUBER: We have seen several new products where we have extended crop insurance to some specialty crops. We’ve made some changes, for example, in the cherry policy with a revenue product. I think the overall liability for specialty crops right now is around $10 to $13-billion dollars. Certainly we’d like to see that improved. The difficulty with a lot of these crops they’re very small with not a lot of producers and sometimes some of the producers aren’t interested in crop insurance. Now what we’ve seen over the last 5-10 years which is very different than I would say 15 years ago is the fact that now a lot of producers are interested in developing these products.

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

How about this for a healthy approach to eating - most foods are okay to eat, some just a little more than others. That’s basically what the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics stated recently in its updated position paper on the “Total Diet”. Simply put, the paper explains that most people know what they need to eat to maintain a healthy diet, and classifying certain foods as “good” or “bad” doesn’t help them to eat better. Instead, it can have the opposite affect by creating a longing for or indulgence of foods that have been labeled as “no, no’s”. Who of us hasn’t gone after something we have been told to stay away from? It’s human nature. The common thread that continues throughout so many of these healthy diet position papers is everything in moderation. That along with controlled portion size and exercise are key to maintaining a healthy body weight. This ‘Total Diet’ position paper does make for interesting and informative reading. You just might want to check it out yourself. It can be found on the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics website. It offers a practical and sensible approach to eating healthy.

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

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