01/22/07 Vaccine & Nothing Artificial

Developing a vaccine & nothing artificial. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. The U.S. government has awarded contracts totaling 132.5-million dollars to three companies for the advanced development of H5N1 bird flu vaccines. The new vaccines would use an immune system booster called an adjuvant - which is added to a vaccine to increases the body`s response to the active ingredient - antigen - in the vaccine. Under the contracts - each company will build its capacity to produce either 150 million doses of an adjuvant-based influenza vaccine - or enough adjuvant for 150 million doses of a vaccine. The companies must be able to do this within six months of the onset of an influenza pandemic. Starbucks Coffee Co. is ending its use of milk products that contain an artificial growth hormone, starting in much of the West and New England. Less than a month after announcing that the chain would stop selling items with trans-fatty acids in half of the company`s U.S. stores, Starbucks announced that it had begun relying solely on milk products without bovine growth hormone in those areas. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Susan Allen. Today on Food Forethought we will lighten things up a bit by sharing some e-mails from listeners. Because Food Forethought attempts to cover health kicks, fads and phobias it seems quite apropos to share this tidbit from a list of thoughts to ponder for 2007; "All those Health nuts will feel stupid some day lying in the hospital bed dying of&.. nothing". Or, "isn't Good Health simply the slowest rate at which one can die?" "Given the fact that in the 60's people took LSD to make he world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal" . One of my favorite thoughts to ponder from the mailbag and one that does make you stop and think for a moment about the irony of the situation we have found ourselves in was from this listeners email. "We knew exactly where one cow with mad-cow disease was located among the millions and millions of cows in America , yet we haven't a clue as to where the thousands of illegal immigrants and terrorist are located. Maybe we should put the Department of Agriculture in charge of immigration." Thanks Susan. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.