05/04/07 Congress On Food Safety & Goodbye Wally

Congress looks at food safety & Goodbye Wally. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Congress is looking into the recent food contamination issues. According to Washington Congressman, Doc Hastings it's in the preliminary stages. HASTINGS: The Congress is going through the process of the hearings on that just to try to get to the bottom of it. Food safety is obviously very important so it's in the preliminary stage just to find the extent of how this is going and in fact how if China has in fact has violated any rules and regulations, how that can be remedied. If somebody is importing into our country at the minimum it has to meet the requirements that we have for our domestic producers, whatever the commodity may be. I mean that's the level playing field. One of my heroes died yesterday and I just wanted to say goodbye to Wally Schirra, one of the original 7 Mercury astronauts. He was 84 and died of natural causes. I would venture a guess that a good portion of my listeners have never heard the name but in my estimation Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Deke Slayton, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn and Scott Carpenter were the epitome of American heroes. Only Carpenter and Glenn are still around. When Wally made it to space in October of 1962 he said "I'm having a ball up here drifting." I'm sure you are Wally. Now here's today's Washington Grange Report. (GRANGE) That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.