Heart Health & Poultry Inspection

Heart Health & Poultry Inspection plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

Chocolate is good for you...no wait...chocolate is bad for you. The answer is, yes! The right kind of chocolate has been found to be good for you and new research may be a sweet treat indeed. The study is being launched to see if pills containing the nutrients in dark chocolate can help prevent heart attacks and strokes. Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston will hold the first large test of cocoa flavanols, which in previous smaller studies improved blood pressure, cholesterol, the body's use of insulin, artery health and other heart-related factors.

More emphasis being placed on poultry inspections. According to Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack, greater efficiency in the poultry inspection process is behind a proposal to modernize inspection efforts. Some of which has been in place in some processing plants since 1999.

VILSACK: On balance we believe this will save and prevent roughly 5200 illnesses a year. There has recently been a review of data concerning those 25 plants and I believe that the professionals at FSIS are confident in saying that there has been an increase of compliance with safety standards.

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

A GMO awareness survey released recently by the NPD Group revealed that 67% of all primary grocery shoppers are not willing to pay a higher price for foods made without GMO ingredients. On the other hand, half of those who primarily shop at specialty food stores said they will pay more for non-GMO products. In the survey more than half of American consumers did express a moderate level of concern about GMOs, but in the same breath could not really define what makes a GMO product a GMO product. At a recent ag industry convention I attended a panel of randomly selected twenty-somethings were asked questions about their grocery shopping, cooking and eating habits. All but one or two of this panel could not explain what a GMO product actually was; most however had heard negative stories regarding GMO foods, and that alone is what they based their decision to buy or not to buy GMO products on. NPD food and beverage industry analyst Darren Seifer is correct then in pointing out that it is definitely time to talk with shoppers about what GMOs are and what roles they play in the food chain. Then and only then can consumers make informed and confidant food choices, regardless of whether they buy GMO products or not.

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