11/29/06 Bone Chip Intolerance & Ag Imports

Bone Chip Intolerance & Ag Imports. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. USDA Deputy Undersecretary Chuck Lambert says he's disappointed the South Koreans went to such great lengths to find a tiny piece of bone in a 9 metric ton U-S Beef shipment  a major blow to U.S. efforts to recapture the market. Lambert says the Koreans have shown they will have "zero tolerance" for bone chips. But it's the way they've handled the initial post BSE U-S shipment by Creekstone Farms that bothers Lambert. LAMBERT: It's disappointing that they've gone to the lengths they have to identify this small, very small piece of bone in more than 9 tons of product. Fiscal Year 2007 agricultural exports are forecast at a record $77-billion. That's up $5-billion from the August forecast  and $8.3-billion dollars from the final fiscal year 2006 total. If realized - this would be the second highest increase ever. The forecast for corn exports was raised $2.1 billion since August to a near-record $8.9 billion. The forecast for the oilseed complex was increased $1.3 billion to $12.4 billion. Soybean export numbers were raised $900 million and soybean meal and oil were also increased. The forecast for imports is also raised by $500 million from the August forecast to a record $69 billion. This would result in a trade surplus of $8 billion for fiscal 2007. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Susan Allen. It was really something, in fact I couldn't believe what I was reading&. that the food safety guru at the very liberal, very vegan, Center for Science in the Public Interest responded to an AP story about food safety by stating that "The problems have changed, a decade ago beef was at the top of the list of concern , now we are more concerned about produce." Carolyn Smith DeWaal, Grande dam of CSPI Food Safety naturally didn't want to give "legs" to the recent AP story highlighting the fact that food born illness are actually occurring at the lowest rate ever recorded in this decade. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that nearly every food born germ now poses less of a threat to humans . So in Ms. DeWaal attempts to spin our attention away from any good news about food and agricultural production she actually did something abhorrent to the very people she represents she gave a shot in the arm to the beef industry. I'm tickled as pink as a rare steak. Thanks Susan. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.