Tons of British Katrina Aid to be Burned by Americans

Being Rusty LaRue is your wet dream... you should see his wife!

But I will agree this just further proves how GWB's Administration had it in for black people.

 

Man this is stupid, burning food?
wth, they might as well send it to some poor 3rd world country, heck someone in africa, india, bangladesh definately could use that food.

stupid asses

 

They indicated they are separating those items out in wnes first link:

"U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations prohibit the importation of British beef and poultry. The prohibition was put in place after a degenerative disease that affects the central nervous system was found in British cattle.

"We have an obligation to hold the food we're distributing to evacuees to the same standards we maintain for all Americans on a daily basis," Agriculture Department spokeswoman Terri Teuber said. "We are not saying these MREs are unfit or unsafe. We're saying they don't meet the importation standards, and they are being set aside."

Teuber said the numbers of meals involved was not available and that some of the MREs were distributed. She also said discussions were under way about possible ways to use additional meals and that other food and goods have made their way to the Gulf Coast.

Darla Jordan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, said American officials work with the countries that make the donations to determine what to do with the donated items as they are received. When the food is needed it is easy to separate from other products because the meals are in divided pouches, Swiergosz said."

You also say "Beef does not even show up in this particular sampling." While its true it doesn't show up in 'this particular sampling' your own bbc link goes on to say it includes 'typically british dishes such as corned BEEF hash...' I find your statement a little misleading and sensationalizing at best.

According to you its ok to give scrubs food the government wouldn't allow other citizens to eat for health reasons. I'm not sure why. Contrary to your exaggerated conclusion, no one is starving - and if they were the answer isn't lowering our standards but getting them acceptable food.

Oh, and one more thing. Before you hold a rally about burning the food you should know the British BURNED about a million cows because of the same concerns.

 

Or, you could say he thinks its OK for starving people in Louisiana to eat the same food US soliders are approved to eat in Iraq.

 

There are so many things they could have done other than this...

I mean they could have warned people of the "potential" risks, and then given them out to whomever wants or NEEEDS the food.

heck, ill take a package, i dont have no lunch money.

 

I have an ambivalent stance on this. On the one hand, I think it's not right for FDA to loosen its restriction on importation of British beef product just for the sake of Katrina relief. I agree with some posters here that U.S. was not after all in a state of food shortage, inspite of Katrina disaster. We were not nearly that desperate. There was plenty of food available in U.S., in various forms, such as canned or vacuum sealed, which could be quickly collected and delivered to the affected population, if we want to. On the other hand, I think the regulations set forth by U.S. government on importation of foreign agricultural products are more due to political/economical interests than to the health concerns for the general American public. However, to alter a long held policy in a situation like this is not wise, nor is needed.

 

well if that aint the pot calling the kettle black

 

Guess we don't need help in major natural disasters from the rest of the world.

 

why not just ship it back or ship it to a starving country like north korea or africa instead if just burning and wasting it..

 

I'm with vlaurilo on this one.

These are MRE, and from what I understand have a shelf life for a year. The FDA could store these for later use or just pass them onto a country that I'm sure would gladly take them. For that matter why not just randomly sample some of the MRE's to test for contamination?

I can understand the FDA taking reasonable precautions but with an emergency it seems like there are reasonable ways to use these instead of just burning them.

 

Scrubs was his wording, not mine. And again, there are no starving people in Louisiana. As I pointed out, the solution is not to feed people who need it stuff we would not allow other citizens to eat, its to get them food that has no concerns. Do you disagree with that? I haven't seen anywhere that this is the only food available for people in need, have you? Further, I don't think these are the same MREs issued to US soldiers in Iraq.

Yeah, I was living there at the time. Thanks. Nothing misleading about my statement - mad cow's is a serious concern. If it wasn't then the british wouldn't have slaughtered so much of their own cattle industry.

No comparison to the scope of the problem. And that begs the question anyway - even if we did have the problem bringing more into the country would still be bad. You're making a terrible argument: Should we allow murderers to come unhindered into the country? Well, why not? We have murderers here too! Not a good policy calculus.

Not worried about pear deficiency syndrome - I assume there is a reason for that as well. Can't tell from the article. If your argument is that they're holding back the Israeli pear juice to protect the US pear juice market, then I think you're being absurd. Generalizing I'd say its hasty for you to assume there is NO reason for these regulations, lol.

I'm pretty sure it also had to do with the regulations for health concerns, or at least that's what the article said.

Asserting that agricultural regulations exist merely for economic/political reasons is silly.

Again I don't see any evidence that this was the only available food. I don't see any evidence anyone is starving. In fact, I don't even see any confirmation that this stuff IS going to be burned, other than some tidbits from the Mirror, which is a tabloid. If it IS going to be burned then I'd agree it'd be better just to ship it back though. I don't agree you serve it up to one section of your population when you wouldn't to another, nor that these import regulations are ONLY for economic/political reasons.

 

Boy you sure do like to attack people don't ya...bet you vote Democrat too.

Firt of all it IS a serious threat to OUR health. Ever heard of Typhoid Mary? Not just a old wifes tail dude. It doesn't take much for disease to spread once it gets a foothold. How about the Bubonic Plague? Hmmm.....there can't be any harm in some rats aboard a ship....oh wait they have fleas that suck blood....oh crap there's a quarter of the worlds population dead...oops my bad. But hey its a 1 in 50 trillion shot right? Shoot the odds of a cat 4 hurricane hitting New Orleans was pretty slim to but wait...that just happened.

Nobody is starving, people can survive weeks without food so stop with the melodrama already. It is far better to be safe then sorry when importing any types of foods, plants etc into the country. And as I stated earlier if we weren't so cautious the critics would just change their tune and say "How could this happen?"......."How could we not catch this before it came into the USA?" And if you don't think so go ask Australia how they like all the bull frogs and rabbits overtaking their country....or China how they like dealing with SARS...

 

It seems like there are two different sets of arguments being made.

The first one claims the food has a serious risk of having Mad Cow disease.

The second claiming that the food doesn't have a serious risk of Mad Cow disease because it's the same type of food that British soldiers eat and why would the UK feed diseased food to their own soldiers.

I'm leaning toward the second argument, however, there aren't enough facts to discount either claims.

So carry on with your speculation guys.

 

Saw a few more opinions on the subject and thought I'd share:

"The FDA have obviously eaten British Army ration packs before. I have, and I can agree they are unfit for human consumption."

"Interesting that most of the information in the article was taken from quotes from one "unnamed" British aid worker. The UK Ministry of Defence and the US FDA don't seem to share the views of this unnamed worker that the food will be destroyed. In fact, the FDA said "We did inspect some MREs (meals ready to eat) on September 13. They are the only MREs we looked at. There were 70 huge pallets of vegetarian MREs. They were from a foreign nation. We inspected them and then released them for distribution."
http://discussions.bbcamerica.com

BTW: is there ANY confirmation (rather than reprint) of this story?

 

At least the guy survived the rotten food, and was fit to offer his opinion ...

 

Don't hold your breath.

And? If you were there during the last outbreak then one would think you'd understand the serious nature of the illness.

Luckily we implement our own regulations to prevent the possible transfer of illnesses through imports in country. Some hack saying its safe doesn't cut it.

No, you're just missing the point. Whether we have it here or not, if 'x' is bad then importing more of it is not a good idea. Saying we already have it doesn't diffuse the point that importing more of it is not good.

I think presumption lies with the regulations that prevent the importation, not the other way around. The article doesn't say anything about the regulation that pertains to the pear juice so there isn't enough information for you to declare its senseless. In fact, as I've already pointed out I haven't even seen any confirmation of this story at all.

Because there are economic and political concerns involved with tariffs and subsidies does NOT equate to the idea that regulations are all in place for economic or political concerns. It defies common sense (IMO) to state that none of these regulations are actually for health concerns. As another poster points out - diseases can spread through importation, new species can be introduced the same way with ill effects. The scope of your warrant (some tariffs/subsidies are driven by economic/political considerations) doesn't match your conclusion (these regulations are just for economic/political gain) either in subject (health driven importation restrictions) nor scope (some vs all).

Again, there is nothing to say these MREs were the only thing available. In fact, its much more likely that the people in the first ten days didn't have food because it wasn't being transported to them. Your argument assumes the only food available was the Israeli pear juice and British MREs which I find most implausible. Certainly you don't think they shipped 400,000 MREs overnight on Day+1 after the hit? Since you don't even know the timeline its curious how you could determine that (a) this was the only food available in the first 10 days and (b) that these MREs would have made it to the people you isolated in the first 10 days. In fact, there isn't even any indication that these MREs would have gone from Little Rock to New Orleans. More likely it would go to the areas containing the refugees from NO.

 

Don't get your panties in a wad dude...in a debate your supposed to check your emotions at the door...but if you insist on spewing derrogatory insults I'll play along...

All I'm saying is there are valid reasons why these rules are in place and used some extreme examples to add hyperbole to my point. There are a lot of events that have happened in the world that nobody even fathomed could happen until one day they did. So don't be so nieve...this type of censorship of imported goods is quite common among most countries for food, animals, insects, plants etc.