Keyword: usda
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The detection of a small amount of genetically modified material in a Washington state farmer's non-GMO alfalfa crop constitutes a "commercial issue" only and does not warrant any government action, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Tuesday. The Washington state farmer had complained in late August to state agricultural officials that his alfalfa hay had been rejected for export sale because of the presence of a genetically modified trait that makes the crop resistant to herbicide. The event triggered a wave of concern from consumer and agricultural groups who have fought the government for nearly a decade to keep...
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A meat inspection program that the Agriculture Department plans to roll out in pork plants nationwide has repeatedly failed to stop the production of contaminated meat at American and foreign plants that have already adopted the approach, documents and interviews show. The program allows meat producers to increase the speed of processing lines by as much as 20 percent and cuts the number of USDA safety inspectors at each plant in half, replacing them with private inspectors EMPLOYED BY MEAT COMPANIES. The approach has been used for more than a decade by five American hog plants under a pilot program....
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A Florida Christian ministry that has been distributing food to the needy for the past 31 years said it will drop all connections with the federal USDA agriculture bureaucracy rather than bow to orders that it must remove Christian symbols from its facility. Fox News reported that officials from the Christian Service Center of Lake City (CSC), Florida, were told by the state agriculture department that in order to continue to receive food from the USDA they would have to remove portraits of Christ and a 10 Commandments display from their facility and stop giving Bibles to those who came...
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Americans know the importance of forests to our communities and our economy. They provide jobs and recreational opportunities, filter our air and water, and make up essential habitat for wildlife and natural resources. But increasingly, we’re also recognizing that forests play an important role in mitigating climate change. Recently, President Obama announced a Climate Action Plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare for the impacts of climate change on our communities and economy, and lead international efforts to combat global climate change. This plan recognizes that America’s forests play a critical role in addressing carbon pollution, absorbing as much as 14...
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A Florida ministry that feeds the poor said a state agriculture department official told them they would not be allowed to receive USDA food unless they removed portraits of Christ, the Ten Commandments, a banner that read “Jesus is Lord” and stopping giving Bibles to the needy.
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Generations of American cooks are wrong. They learned their wrongity wrongity wrong habits from their parents, or from public television’s Julia Child. Their terrible, filthy habit is rinsing poultry before cooking. Public health experts estimate that as many as 90% of Americans do it, and they want us to cut it out. Poultry-washing makes intuitive sense: you don’t know where that bird has been or what kind of bacteria are crawling on the outside. Julia Child herself admitted that washing a chicken before roasting it felt cleaner, even if the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the government agency in charge of...
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With each passing day, it seems the United States of America, “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” is becoming more and more like the Communist Russia I learned about in elementary school where people weren’t allowed to grow their own food unless the State “allowed” it. In this latest crackdown on citizens simply trying to provide for themselves using the most basic of skills – gardening – the USDA’s Rural Development Agency is forbidding Rosie, an industrious 4-year old girl in South Dakota from using a small, unused area outside her subsidized housing unit to grow green...
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture made farm subsidy payments to 28,613 dead farmers between 2011 and 2012, of which 1,799 were deemed “improper,” according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report issued in June. The report, entitled “USDA Needs to Do More to Prevent Improper Payments to Deceased Individuals,” said USDA’s Farm Service Agency identified “thousands of deceased individuals who were paid $3.3 million in improper payments after their dates of death, of which FSA has recovered approximately $1 million.” … “Improper payments” are those sent to individuals who had not properly filed documentation and who had subsequently died, or...
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With a record 101 million Americans receiving food aid from the federal government, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) wants more kids to be on the dole for food during the summer months. “As part of its ongoing commitment to improving access to healthy food for low income children, USDA has set a goal of serving 5 million more meals to eligible children this summer,” the agency said on Aug. 1. The agency’s goal amounts to serving 166 million meals through its Summer Food Service Program (SFSP), which already gives subsidies to 3.5 million children a day during breaks from...
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First, Michelle Obama called for healthier school lunches -- and kids complained that the first lady's menus left them hungry. Now, the United States Department of Agriculture has green-lighted a pilot program to serve trendy Greek yogurt in school cafeterias in New York, Idaho, Arizona, and Tennessee. If all goes well this fall, Greek yogurt may became a staple in Washington's $11 billion school lunch program in some 100,000 schools. In one sense, it's an example of America's growing European Union-style nanny state -- not to mention crony capitalism and insider influence. Two of the biggest cheerleaders of Greek yogurt...
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School administrations continue to hang posters in cafeterias trying to convince students that what is being fed to them is "fun food" which is healthier for them than the foods they enjoy eating. Meanwhile schools are having to purchase more garbage cans to contain the Michelle mandated foods that kids are dumping, some preferring to go hungry rather than eat "required" foods. Students just throw away the food being forced on them by the US Government.
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OZARK, Mo. — This summer, Marty the Magician got a letter from the U.S. government. It began with six ominous words: “Dear Members of Our Regulated Community . . .” Washington had questions about his rabbit. Again. Marty Hahne, 54, does magic shows for kids in southern Missouri. For his big finale, he pulls a rabbit out of a hat. Or out of a picnic basket. Or out of a tiny library, if he’s doing his routine about reading being magical. To do that, Hahne has an official U.S. government license. Not for the magic. For the rabbit. The Agriculture Department requires...
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House GOP leaders took a big gamble Thursday in bringing a farm bill without food stamps to the floor, and it paid off — just barely. The House passed the bill 216-208, inching across a 213-vote threshold without a single Democrat supporting the measure.
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<p>Speaker John Boehner proved to the world that he still has enough support among Republicans in the House to pass a bill.</p>
<p>The fact that the Senate won't touch the Farm Bill passed by the House and President Obama has threatened to veto it because the GOP scrubbed the food stamp provision in the legislation, also means that Boehner is still clueless about almost everything else.</p>
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New York’s Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake school district has become the latest casualty in first lady Michelle Obama’s preferred lunch plan, dropping the menu after too many students complained of hunger. “[Food service manager Nicky] Boehm and her staff worked hard to implement the new regulations, but there were just too many problems and too many foods that students did not like and would not purchase,” said Assistant Superintendent Chris Abdoo about the National School Lunch Program in a statement reported by EAGNews.org. “Students complained of being hungry with these lunches and the district lost money.” Undaunted, the nattering nabobs from...
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After a children’s magician said he was harassed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture over a permit for the rabbit he used in his act a few years back, Marty Hahne probably figured it couldn’t get any more intrusive than that. USDA Reportedly Orders Childrens Magician to Produce Disaster Plan for His...Rabbit (Credit: Marty Hahne web site) Silly, Marty… Now the Ozark, Mo.-based illusionist is saying the trick’s allegedly on him, as he notes in an email to blogger, Bob McCarty (emphasis added): My USDA rabbit license requirement has taken another ridiculous twist. I just received an 8 page letter...
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See the website pages....
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“The Pig Cafeteria” was an exhibit produced by the Department of Agriculture to educate farmers about new methods of farming and raising livestock — specifically, what to feed pigs so that they would be healthy and profitable.
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The USDA Rural Development agency also touted a program to subsidize the Wine Barn LLC in “marketing and increasing production of its Kansas produced wine.” That cost $25,000. The USDA Rural Development also said it would hand $300,000 to the Mackinaw Trail Winery in Michigan, $100,000 for the Appleton Creek Winery in New York, $162,500 for the Old Westminster Winery in Maryland, and tens of thousands of dollars to wineries in Nebraska and Iowa. Liquor is the name of the game for the USDA, apparently – they’re also subsidizing the production of vodka in North Carolina, Bloody Mary mix in...
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The Oxford English Dictionary defines "poison" as "a substance that is capable of causing the illness or death of a living organism when introduced or absorbed." The legal definition of the term is "any product or substance that can harm someone if it is used in the wrong way, by the wrong person, or in the wrong amount." The medical condition of poisoning is even broader: It can be caused by substances that are not even legally required to carry the label "poison." Therefore, can food become poisonous? Of course it can if it is infected, tampered with or altered...
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