Monday, June 30, 2008

Slow Food Nation comes to San Francisco

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/30/MNNE11GCLI.DTL

(06-29) 16:10 PDT -- Pick up your forks and knives, and let the revolution start now.

That's the rallying cry of the organizers of Slow Food Nation, an event designed to change the way people eat.

Fifty thousand people, including some of the world's leading food authorities, health care experts, farmers and policymakers, are expected to attend the four-day exhibition in San Francisco over Labor Day weekend - what's being called the largest celebration of American food in history.

Their message: Americans need to fix the food system or risk destroying their health and the planet.

"This impacts every single one us," said Mayor Gavin Newsom. "No matter where we live or how we've been raised, this is a profoundly important issue."

Workers will break ground Tuesday on a vegetable garden at San Francisco City Hall, where the public can take free tours and taste fresh produce. In addition, Slow Food Nation, held at both the Civic Center and Fort Mason, will include lectures, workshops, cooking demonstrations, tastings, films, concerts, hikes, a farmers' market and a "Slow on the Go" food court. Some of the programs are free; others require tickets that range in price from $5 to $65 (slowfoodnation.org) to help offset the $2 million cost.

One highlight will be the pavilions at Fort Mason, which will be divided by types of food - chocolate, cheese, bread, honey and the like - showcasing American varieties and artisan producers. At the Civic Center, speakers will include "Fast Food Nation" author Eric Schlosser; author, farmer and cultural critic Wendell Berry; and nutrition expert and "What to Eat" author Marion Nestle.

European influences

Slow Food Nation is the first such event to be held in the United States, although it's patterned after similar events in Europe.

Slow Food, a philosophy that food should be not only savored, but also produced with a social and environmental conscience, started as an Italian protest movement in 1986.

Furious that McDonald's had come to Rome, political activist Carlo Petrini organized a demonstration against the fast-food chain.

"Rather than take the French route - driving a tractor through the building - Petrini took a more Italian hedonistic tack," said Michael Pollan, a UC Berkeley professor and well-known food journalist and author who, like Petrini, is scheduled to speak on several panels. "Petrini set up trestle tables in front of the McDonald's, called upon Italy's grandmothers to make their favorite dishes and served them to passers-by."

Since then, Slow Food organizations have formed in 131 countries, working to preserve local cuisine and lobby for more sustainable and fair-wage farming practices.

Critics have denounced the movement, calling it elitist and accusing it of trying to stand in the way of farming and production methods that would make food cheaper. Proponents argue that eating local products grown and raised without chemicals, as opposed to nonorganic imported goods, will save the environment, lead to good health and save Americans money.

"Unless we squeeze the fossil fuel out of our dinner," Pollan said, we won't be able to maintain a viable food supply. "We no longer can catch salmon in Alaska, fillet it in China and serve it in New York."

Food as a language

Slow Food Nation founder Alice Waters, the Berkeley restaurateur who popularized the idea of serving food straight from local, organic farms to the table at her Chez Panisse restaurant, says the timing of the event, which kicks off on the eve of the presidential election, is no coincidence.

"We want people to vote with their forks," she said. "Food is our common language. The choices we make about what we eat not only affect our health, but affect our planet."

Pollan hopes the event will help galvanize the new administration to push for a better food agenda in this country.

"There's a real need for rethinking things," he said, adding that the world is in the midst of a food crisis, with people either starving or obese. There's something terribly wrong, says Pollan, when "it's cheaper to buy a double cheeseburger than a head of broccoli."

Countries like Haiti and the Philippines have become so reliant on imported rice that they've stopped growing their own, said Pollan, who blames globalization. Now their citizens are going hungry.

Back to basics

Newsom's worries are closer to home.

"In the Bayview, the only produce being sold is at a liquor store, and it's three days past its due date," he said. "Instead, I see a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Taco Bell. Our fast-food culture is the primary contributor to the health care costs in this country."

Waters complains that people don't even know how to cook anymore.

"We used to know how," she said. "We just got disconnected from it. The globalization of food took us by surprise. People told us, 'It's too hard to cook. Let us do it for you.' "

She hopes that Slow Food Nation will motivate people to get back to the basics - "learn how to fry an egg or stir polenta." She's also optimistic that participants will be spurred to reject industrialized farming, persuaded to eat locally and inspired to fight for changes in food policy.

None of this is far-fetched, said Waters, who has seen a significant shift in the public's attitude in the last five years - especially in the 18-to-22-age group.

"All of a sudden, it's happening," she said. "There are all these people who want to live off the grid. They want to farm. I see young people with their kids buying food at the farmers' market."

She acknowledges that the Bay Area may be a bit ahead of the curve.

"Next year," she said, "we'll take it to Washington, D.C., then New Orleans, then the Midwest."

E-mail Stacy Finz at sfinz@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle


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Bovine Tuberculosis Herds Found in California

http://californiafarmer.com/index.aspx?ascxid=fpStory&fpsid=34556&fpstid=2

 

The California Department of Food and Agriculture and the USDA have confirmed the detection of bovine tuberculosis in two more dairy herds in Fresno County. A single cow in each of these two additional herds was confirmed positive, bringing the current total number of herds affected to three. USDA is beginning the process to officially downgrade California's bovine tuberculosis status from "Accredited Free" to "Modified Accredited Advanced."

CDFA and USDA personnel continue to spearhead the effort to eradicate bovine tuberculosis from California's cattle. CDFA and USDA veterinarians and animal health professionals from across the State and nation are helping with the effort. Since bovine tuberculosis was first detected in January 2008, more than 105 herds and over 150,000 cattle have been tested as part of the investigation.

The drop in status is required by the USDA's Code of Federal Regulations following the detection of two affected herds within 48 months. It will impose additional testing requirements on California's cattle industry when shipping animals out of state. CDFA animal disease control experts are working with USDA to evaluate dividing California so that part of the state could return to a "TB Free" status while intensive disease eradication efforts continue in the affected area of California.

California regained its Bovine Tuberculosis Accredited-Free status on April 15, 2005 two years after losing its status due to an outbreak in Kings and Tulare counties. Following the detection of bovine tuberculosis in 2003, over 876,000 cattle from 688 herds were tested in California to make sure the disease had not spread beyond the three detected dairy herds. New rules were also put in place requiring that dairy breeding cattle entering California be tested to help prevent reintroduction of the disease - this rule remains in effect.

Bovine tuberculosis does not threaten the quality and safety of milk and meat products produced in California. Almost all milk sold in California is pasteurized, which destroys organisms that could be harmful to humans, including tuberculosis organisms. The state's two raw milk dairies are regularly tested for tuberculosis. All cattle processed for meat are inspected for signs of tuberculosis infection and rejected for consumption if they show signs of the disease.

The best way for cattle producers to prevent bovine tuberculosis is to maintain a closed herd or isolate and test purchased additions and cattle re-entering the herd, maintain accurate records of animal identification and movements, prevent contact with cattle of unknown tuberculosis status, arrange professional diagnostic workup of sick animals, and establish a tuberculosis testing policy for employees.

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Sunday, June 29, 2008

HSUS uncovers more downer cattle abuse

Beef dispute confronts Rice on Korean visit

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080629/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_skorea_beef

By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer Sat Jun 28, 10:53 PM ET

SEOUL, South Korea - Beef bested bombs.
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America's chief diplomat found herself vouching for the purity of U.S. cattle Saturday, wading into a bitter trade dispute that for South Koreans has eclipsed the long-running drama over North Korea's nuclear activity and threatened the government of President Lee Myung-bak.

Just one day after the communist North demolished the most visible symbol of its nuclear programs, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faced a barrage of questions about the safety of American steaks, chops and burgers. She had told reporters she hoped this issue would not distract from other matters.

"I want to assure everyone that American beef is safe," she told a news conference with South Korea's foreign minister, Yu Myung-hwan. "We will continue to work with you to have consumer confidence in that matter. We want there to be consumer confidence in American beef."

But Yu said the beef issue probably would not go away quickly.

"It will take time for that risk to be erased from the minds of the Korean public," he said.

For many South Koreans, who have lived with threats from their neighbor for five decades, the nuclear issue is of less concern than is Seoul's agreement to lift a ban on American beef imports in April as a way to restore strained ties with Washington.

Activists have staged daily rallies on the streets of the capital to voice fears about possible health risks such as mad cow disease. As officials began inspecting U.S. beef on Friday before it can reach markets, hundreds of labor activists blocked customs storage facilities.

A small but loud and angry group of about 15 sign-carrying protesters gathered outside the South Korean Foreign Ministry, where Rice met with Yu.

"Rice go home," they chanted. Placards said, "Stop Rice and Mad Cow," and "We Don't Need U.S. Troops. We Don't Need Mad Cows."

Later Saturday, about 15,000 people staged another street rally in Seoul, clashing with riot police who stopped them from marching into the presidential Blue House, according to police. Protesters wielded steel pipes and threw stones at riot police who used water cannons and fire extinguishers to repel them, police said.

Police said they arrested more than 50 protesters on charges of beating riot police and illegally occupying streets. Hundreds of riot police and protesters were injured during the rally that continued until early Sunday morning, according to media reports.

U.S. beef was banned for most of the past 4 1/2 years, since the first case of mad cow disease in the U.S. was discovered in late 2003. In the wake of public outrage over plans to resume shipments of American beef, the South Korean Cabinet has offered to resign and the president has reshuffled top advisers.

Seoul agreed to resume U.S. beef imports only after American producers said they would limit shipments to meat from cattle younger than 30 months. These animals are believed less susceptible to mad cow disease. The restriction was considered a transitional step that will be lifted when conditions change in South Korea.

Traveling to Seoul after meetings in Japan, where North Korea dominated the agenda, Rice expressed hope that South Koreans would accept official assurances there are no health issues with American beef.

"We hope that in time the South Korean people will listen to that and will be willing to listen to what their government is saying and what we're saying," she told reporters on her plane. "The U.S. believes strongly in the safety of its product."

In Seoul, Rice did manage, briefly, to address the North Korea developments. She said Friday's destruction of the cooling tower at the North's main nuclear facility was significant, but that far more had to be done.

The demolition followed moves this past week by the U.S. to end penalties North Korea in response to the country's submission of a long-delayed declaration of its nuclear programs.

"I expect that the North will live up to the obligations that it's undertaken, to take those concerns seriously and to address them," Rice said. There are suspicions that information was left out of the declaration, such as Pyongyang's alleged uranium enrichment and nuclear proliferation.

"At the end of this, we have to have the abandonment of all programs, weapons and materials," she said.

After seeing Yu, Rice met with Lee and briefed him on recent progress on the nuclear issue. Lee told her that the two countries should work closely to get North Korea to give up all nuclear weapons and programs, a statement from the presidential Blue House said.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

US extends search for tainted food

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/06/28/us_extends_search_for_tainted_food/

WASHINGTON - The United States is examining whether something other than tomatoes may be the source of a salmonella outbreak that has now sickened 810 people.

While tomatoes remain the likely cause for the growing toll of illnesses reported, investigators can't rule out that another food is to blame, said Patricia Griffin, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

"We continue to look at other possible sources," Griffin said.

The number of people who have become ill during the salmonella outbreak is about four times the 205 cases reported after packaged fresh spinach was tainted by E. coli in 2006. The tally of reported illnesses described by the CDC increased 54 since Thursday alone.

Investigators can't rule out that tainted products are still on store shelves or that tomatoes are continuing to be contaminated in a packing house or some other point in the distribution chain, said David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's associate commissioner for foods.
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Friday, June 27, 2008

Fresh off the Farm: Va. Program Connects Schools to Homegrown Food

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/24/AR2008062401818.html

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2008; Page LZ03

State officials have launched a program designed to connect small Virginia farmers with schools in hopes of boosting the agricultural economy and encouraging children to eat organic, locally grown food.

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services announced June 18 the creation of a Web site devoted to the Farm-to-School program ( http://www.vdacs.virginia.gov/marketing/farm.shtml).

Officials plan to use the site to link local producers of milk, eggs, meat and produce with colleges, universities, and public and private grade schools that are interested in purchasing those goods, many of which are organic, to feed students.

"We are essentially offering a matchmaking service here," said Elaine Lidholm, a spokeswoman for the agriculture department. "If a farmer or a group of farmers says, 'Yes, we can provide apples and whatever for your school and deliver it right to your door,' we want to be able to connect them with a school that wants that service."

Virginia schools spend more than $6 million a year on fresh produce, Lidholm said. The aim is to encourage schools to turn to local producers for more of what cafeterias serve, such as apples in the fall or salad greens in the spring.

The department hopes to capitalize on the rising popularity of locally grown food, which is prized for its environmental benefits. Some consumers say it is healthier and tastes better, and farmers have noted that crops grown closer to markets are more economical as gas prices soar.

The program also could link schools with food from farms in places such as Loudoun County, the Shenandoah Valley or Southside Virginia.

Several states have adopted Farm-to-School programs, including Maryland and Pennsylvania, said Tegan Hagy, the mid-Atlantic coordinator for the national program.

In the past, federal regulations prohibited government agencies from giving preferential treatment to local businesses, but some of those barriers were lifted under farm legislation Congress passed this year, she said.

The programs not only have economic and nutritional benefits, but also educational ones, Hagy said.

"It's not just about getting the food into the child's mouth," she said. "While obviously that's important, we really want them to internalize and understand where their food comes from. People have gotten really disconnected from that."

Some schools in the state have been forging relationships with area farmers. Students in Rappahannock County, which "probably has one of the highest farmer-to-student ratios in the state," joked resident Amy Silver O'Leary, have been growing and cooking crops donated by local farmers as part of a program called Farm-to-Table.

The connection not only has enriched school lunches, but also has helped students understand the connection between the land and what they eat, said O'Leary, coordinator of grants and partnerships for Headwaters, the education group in charge of the program.

"One of the things our program does is raise children's awareness of where their food comes from and what it takes to produce food," she sai


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UN to press G8 on food crisis, climate change, poverty

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iHr4_fkkQgnyv3Ukx0L8nJuJQDcw


UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — UN chief Ban Ki-moon said Thursday he would press Group of Eight (G8) leaders at their summit in Japan next month to tackle the world food crisis, climate change and the flagging fight against global poverty.

On the eve of his departure on a two-week, three-nation Asian tour, the secretary general said the July 7-9 summit in the northern Japanese resort town of Toyako must face the three inter-related crises which demand "our immediate action."

He said that before departing, he would write to each of the G8 leaders to lay out his concerns about the global food crisis, the need "to act now" on climate change if a deal to cut greenhouse gases is to be reached by the end of next year, and the emergency of development.

"If ever there were a time to act, together as one, it is now," he told a press conference.

Ban said he would appeal to world leaders in Toyako "to deliver on the measures agreed to in Rome earlier this month to end the current food crisis and prevent a recurrence".

These measures include a commitment by nations to remove export restrictions and levies on food commodities and cut agricultural subsidies, particularly in developed countries.

Ban said he would also propose tripling the proportion of Official Development Assistance (ODA) from wealthy nations to developing countries for farm production and rural development.

"To overcome this crisis, we need nothing less than a second, green revolution," he said.

And noting that the international community was falling behind in its goal of achieving the poverty-reduction Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, he said: "If we are to deliver on this promised future, we must take steps today."

On climate change, the UN chief urged stepped-up bargaining to reach a new, historic deal in Copenhagen next year.

The treaty due to be hammered out in the Danish capital in December 2009 is meant to provide an action plan after the Kyoto Protocol's obligations to cut greenhouse gas emissions expire at the end of 2012.

The United States, which snubbed Kyoto, and developing nations, which have no obligations under it, agreed at a conference in December in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate to craft the next treaty.

Ban said he would press the G8 leaders to agree "short- and medium-term targets" for reducing greenhouse gases.

He added that a fully funded and operational adaptation fund to help the world's most vulnerable nations cope with global warming must be in place by the end of this year.

The UN chief also warned that the combined impact of climate change and of the global food crisis were slowing and in some cases reversing progress made towards achieving the MDGs.

"In Hokkaido (the G8 summit) we must deliver on our commitments," he said.

"I will also seek increased funding for specific programs relating to infant and maternal health, community health projects and disease control, HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and neglected tropical diseases."

The G8 is made up of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.

Ban's Asian tour will first take him to Japan from Saturday to Tuesday for talks with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Emperor Akihito.

It will be Ban's first visit to Japan since he took over as secretary general early last year.

The UN chief, a former South Korean foreign minister, is then to visit China and South Korea before attending the G8 summit in Hokkaido.

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Thursday, June 26, 2008

Honey bee crisis could lead to higher food prices

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gV9ZkvaSg-PdW-F03XQvXCINgWqgD91I0HM00

WASHINGTON (AP) — Food prices could rise even more unless the mysterious decline in honey bees is solved, farmers and businessmen told lawmakers Thursday.

"No bees, no crops," North Carolina grower Robert D. Edwards told a House Agriculture subcommittee. Edwards said he had to cut his cucumber acreage in half because of the lack of bees available to rent.

About three-quarters of flowering plants rely on birds, bees and other pollinators to help them reproduce. Bee pollination is essential is responsible for $15 billion annually in crop value.

In 2006, beekeepers began reporting losing 30 percent to 90 percent of their hives. This phenomenon has become known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Scientists do not know how many bees have died; beekeepers have lost 36 percent of their managed colonies this year. It was 31 percent for 2007, said Edward B. Knipling, administrator of the Agriculture Department's Agricultural Research Service.

"If there are no bees, there is no way for our nation's farmers to continue to grow the high quality, nutritious foods our country relies on," said Democratic Rep. Dennis Cardoza of California, chairman of the horticulture and organic agriculture panel. "This is a crisis we cannot afford to ignore."

Food prices have gone up 83 percent in three years, according to the World Bank.

Edward R. Flanagan, who raises blueberries in Milbridge, Maine, said he could be forced to increase prices tenfold or go out of business without the beekeeping industry. "Every one of those berries owes its existence to the crazy, neurotic dancing of a honey bee from flower to flower," he said.

The cause behind the disorder remains unknown. Possible explanations include pesticides; a new parasite or pathogen; and the combination of immune-suppressing stresses such as poor nutrition, limited or contaminated water supplies and the need to move bees long distances for pollination.

Ice cream maker Haagen-Dazs and natural personal care products company Burt's Bees have pledged money for research and begun efforts to help save the bees.

The problem affects about 40 percent of Haagen-Dazs' 73 flavors, including banana split and chocolate peanut butter, because ingredients such as almonds, cherries and strawberries rely on honey bees for pollination.

Katty Pien, brand director for Haagen-Dazs, said those ingredients could become too scarce or expensive if bees keep dying. It could force the company to discontinue some of its most popular flavors, Pien said.

Haagen-Dazs has developed a new limited-time flavor, vanilla honey bee, and will use some of the proceeds for research on the disorder. Burt's Bees has introduced Colony Collapse Disorder Lip Balm to "soften your lips while saving honeybees."

The House Appropriations Committee approved $780,000 on Thursday for research on the disorder and $10 million for bee research. The money awaits approval by the full House and Senate.


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CDC: 756 ill from salmonella-tainted tomatoes

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gGU3mgxShkCMpPha2MrBUbWdKzdgD91I0PH00

WASHINGTON (AP) — The official toll from salmonella-tainted tomatoes continues to rise: The government counted 756 confirmed illnesses Thursday.

That's roughly 200 more illnesses than health officials had counted a week ago, in what has become the nation's largest-ever outbreak of salmonella from tomatoes.

The continuing rise in cases is due mostly to state laboratories finishing backlogs of tests, not lots of new infections, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The latest known illness occurred on June 13.

The outbreak's source remains a mystery. Food and Drug Administration investigators have spent the past week inspecting farms in parts of Florida and Mexico and the warehouses and other stops those farms' tomatoes made on the way to market.

The government continues to urge consumers nationwide to avoid raw red plum, red Roma or red round tomatoes unless they were grown in specific states or countries that FDA has cleared of suspicion. Check FDA's Web site — http://www.fda.gov — for an updated list. Also safe are grape tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and tomatoes sold with the vine still attached.

At least 95 people have been hospitalized, the CDC said. No deaths have been attributed to the outbreak, although it may have contributed to a death due to cancer.

Salmonella is a bacterial infection causing fever, diarrhea and abdominal cramps, often caused by eating foods contaminated with animal feces


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Kroger ground beef is recalled

USDA: E. coli sickened at least 35 in Michigan, Ohio

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080626/NEWS05/806260340

Kroger is recalling all ground beef products with sell-by dates between May 21 and June 8 because they may contain E. coli bacteria that is believed to have stricken at least 35 people in Michigan and Ohio, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday.
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No fatalities have been reported, though 14 people were hospitalized -- including one Michigander treated for kidney failure and later released.

The recall involves an undetermined amount of ground beef, including all varieties and weights of products sold in Michigan stores as well as stores in counties in the Toledo and Columbus areas in Ohio.

Kroger and health officials said none of the infected product remains in stores.

"The products are no longer available," said Amanda Eamich, spokeswoman for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service. "We actually are encouraging people to look in their freezers."

Beef purchased between those dates and placed in freezers should be discarded or returned to the grocer for refunds, the agency said.

"If you have ground beef in the freezer that you are the least concerned about, please bring it back and we will refund your money," said Dale Hollandsworth, a spokesman for the Kroger Co., based in Cincinnati.

The Kroger ground beef has been linked genetically and through food case studies to recent E. coli 0157:H7 outbreaks in Michigan and Ohio, according to state health departments in the two states and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Michigan has reported 16 cases of related E. coli infections, and Ohio has reported 19.

At least 14 people have been hospitalized in the two states from the bacteria, the CDC said.

Hollandsworth said Kroger is confident current store supplies of ground beef are safe for sale because state health officials have tested supplies.

"The health department has done several testings and samplings to make sure that the ground beef is safe," Hollandsworth said of current product in the stores.

Hollandsworth said store employees placed notices of the contaminated products in stores Tuesday night and Wednesday, and that he did not think sales would be adversely affected.
Shoppers weigh in

Kroger shoppers were aware of the issue, but didn't seem overly concerned.

Ray Silme, 30, of Dearborn said he did not buy any meat Wednesday at the Kroger on Colson Street in Dearborn.

But that didn't mean he wouldn't.

"I would still buy it. I'd just cook the heck out of it," he said.

Gino Sabou, 32, of Northville, who shopped at the Colson Street Kroger, said the country needs to do more inspections to avoid a major outbreak.

"Obviously we need more inspectors and harsher rules," he said.

Kroger likely will not suffer any ill effects from the recall, agreed grocery industry analyst David Livingston, managing partner of DJL Research in Waukesha, Wis.

"Generally, the consumers forget about this pretty quick," said Livingston, noting recent recalls of tomatoes and spinach. "This has happened fast before. It will probably blow over."
Source of bad beef sought

Kroger is working in cooperation with state and federal investigators in trying to locate the source of the contaminated meat, the Michigan Department of Community Health said.

Hollandsworth said Kroger and health officials cannot yet identify the specific meat supplier or suppliers involved with the tainted ground beef. The grocery company uses several large suppliers.

"We're working with them by providing any and all records that we have relative to that," he said. "This is critical not just to Kroger, but to the food industry."

Health officials warn consumers to cook all ground beef to an internal temperature of at least 160 degrees Fahrenheit to kill any potential bacteria.

Eating rare and under-cooked meat can lead to bacterial infection of E. coli 0157:H7, which can cause stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhea.

In extreme cases, it can lead to kidney failure and even death.

2008 Farm Bill Implementation audio

mms://ocbmtcwmp.usda.gov/content/secy/secy062508.wma

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Record corn prices mean more expensive meat, dairy

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080622/ap_on_bi_ge/midwest_flooding_food_prices

By STEVENSON JACOBS, AP Business Writer
2 hours, 6 minutes ago



NEW YORK - Raging Midwest floodwaters that swallowed crops and sent corn and soybean prices soaring are about to give consumers more grief at the grocery store.

In the latest bout of food inflation, beef, pork, poultry and even eggs, cheese and milk are expected to get more expensive as livestock owners go out of business or are forced to slaughter more cattle, hogs, turkeys and chickens to cope with rocketing costs for corn-based animal feed.

The floods engulfed an estimated 2 million or more acres of corn and soybean fields in Iowa, Indiana, Illinois and other key growing states, sending world grain prices skyward on fears of a substantially smaller corn crop. The government will give a partial idea of how many corn acres were lost before the end of the month, but experts say the trickle-down effect could be more dramatic later this year, affecting everything from Thanksgiving turkeys to Christmas hams.

Rod Brenneman, president and chief executive of Seaboard Foods, a pork supplier in Sawnee Mission, Kan. that produces 4 million hogs a year, said high corn costs were already forcing producers in his industry to cut back on the number of animals they raise.

"There's definitely liquidation of livestock happening," and that will cause meat prices to rise later this year and into 2009, said Brenneman, who is also the vice chairman of the American Meat Institute.

Brenneman's cost for feeding a single hog has shot up $30 in the past year because of record-high prices for corn and soybeans, the main ingredients in animal feed. Passing that increase on to consumers would tack an extra 15 cents per pound onto a pork chop.

It's a similar story for U.S. beef producers, who now spend a whopping 60-70 percent of their production costs on animal feed and are seeing that number rise daily as corn prices hover near an unprecedented $8 a bushel, up from about $4 a year ago.

"This is not sustainable. The cattle industry is going to have to get smaller," said James Herring, president and CEO of Amarillo, Tex.-based Friona Industries, which buys 20 million bushels of corn each year to feed 550,000 cattle.

Corn's prices were already rising before the floods, driven up 80 percent over the past year as developing countries like China and India scramble for grains to feed people and livestock. U.S. production of ethanol, an alternative fuel that can be made with corn, has also pushed prices higher, prompting livestock owners to lobby Washington to roll back ethanol mandates.

Before the floods, corn farmers were enjoying record profits selling the grain to feed animals and for use in cereals and as a sweetener in soda and candy. But a sharply smaller corn crop could wipe out those gains.

In Iowa, the No. 1 U.S. corn grower, floods inundated about 9 percent of corn crops, representing about 1.2 million acres — almost 1.5 percent of the country's anticipated harvest.

In Indiana, another 9 percent of corn and soybean crops were flooded, potentially costing farmers up to $840 million in lost earnings, Indiana Agriculture Director Andy Miller said.

Floodwaters also tossed farm equipment, sprayed cornfields with debris and silt and sucked away large chunks of topsoil. For livestock owners and meat producers, the damage may be felt long after the corn grows back.

Even before the floods, Tyson Foods was complaining that high grain prices would drive up its costs by $600 million this year. The world's largest poultry company has already raised its prices over the past year, and expects to keep raising them, CEO Dick Bond told analysts at a conference in May.

Higher feed prices will eventually filter through to the cost of milk, cheese and yogurt, too, since 65 to 75 percent of a dairy farmers' production costs are for feed, said Chris Galen, a spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation.

With the cost of animal feed only going higher, many poultry and dairy farmers are starting to look for cheaper alternatives.

Nebraska dairy farmer Dan Rice, who has 1,500 cows, said one alternative is to buy some of the byproducts of cereal or flour production, but they're not nearly as productive compared to corn.

"If we all feed less corn and get less production, then the price at the grocery stores are going to go up," said Rice, who supplies milk to grocery stores in Omaha and around Kansas City.

Without easy ways to cut costs, many livestock producers will have little choice but to slaughter more animals and send them to market.

"We're in survival mode now," said Paul Hill, chairman of West Liberty Foods, a turkey processor based in West Liberty, Iowa. He estimated U.S. turkey producers will reduce their flocks by 10 to 15 percent nationwide, a cutback that will send consumer prices dramatically higher.

"The cost of Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys will go up this year, and maybe even more next year," said Hill, who is also the chairman of the National Turkey Federation.

If corn were to rise to $10 a bushel, Richard Lobb, spokesman for the National Chicken Council, said recouping costs through higher retail prices may not be possible.

"Can you possibly charge enough for the chicken to recoup that investment?" he said. "That's a question no one can answer yet because it's never been done."

___

Beef, pet food, spinach: Recalling recent food scares

http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1102391

Prior to the tomato-linked salmonella outbreak, food-related illness and recalls that have affected Bay Staters in recent years include:

Beef shipped across the country, including to 112 Massachusetts schools, was recalled in February after the U.S. Department of Agriculture learned employees of Hallmark/Westland Meat in California were videotaped using a fork lift and electronic prod to force sick cattle into the slaughterhouse. The recall of 143 million pounds of beef was the largest in U.S. history. No illnesses were reported.

In December, the state Department of Public Health identified milk containing listeria from Whittier Farms in West Sutton as responsible for three deaths. Two elderly men and an unborn child were killed by the bacteria, while a third man and the child’s mother were made ill. The dairy farm halted production.

In March 2007, tainted pet food forced massive recalls of chow sold under more than 80 brand names. At least 16 cats and dogs nationwide died.

Hundreds of people, including at least five in Massachusetts, fell violently ill after eating salmonella-tainted peanut butter that was pulled from supermarkets in February 2007.

Spinach was pulled from grocery store shelves and restaurant menus after an outbreak of E. coli was linked to bags of the leafy greens in September 2006. An elderly woman died and nearly 100 people were sickened.

Food Stamps Buy Less, and Families Are Hit Hard

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/nyregion/22food.html?em&ex=1214280000&en=847d0f4dc7ed7a8a&ei=5087%0A

Making ends meet on food stamps has never been easy for Cassandra Johnson, but since food prices began their steep climb earlier this year, she has had to develop new survival strategies.
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Andrew Henderson/The New York Times

June Jacobs-Cuffee of Brooklyn now opts for canned goods because of the rising prices. “It does require very careful budgeting,” she said.


She hunts for items that are on the shelf beyond their expiration dates because their prices are often reduced, a practice she once avoided.

Ms. Johnson, 44, who works in customer service for a medical firm, knows that buying food this way is not healthy, but she sees no other choice if she wants to feed herself and her 1-year-old niece Ammni Harris and 2-year-old nephew Tramier Harris, who live with her.

“I live paycheck to paycheck,” said Ms. Johnson, as she walked out of a market near her home in Hackensack, N.J., pushing both Ammni and the week’s groceries in a shopping cart. “And we’re not coping.”

The sharp rise in food prices is being felt acutely by poor families on food stamps, the federal food assistance program.

In the past year, the cost of food for what the government considers a minimum nutritional diet has risen 7.2 percent nationwide. It is on track to become the largest increase since 1989, according to April data, the most recent numbers, from the United States Department of Agriculture. The prices of certain staples have risen even more. The cost of eggs, for example, has increased nearly 20 percent, and the price of milk and other dairy products has risen 10 percent.

But food stamp allocations, intended to cover only minimum needs, have not changed since last fall and will not rise again until October, when an increase linked to inflation will take effect. The percentage, equal to the annual rise in prices for the minimum nutritional food basket as measured each June, is usually announced by early August.

Some advocates and politicians say that this relief will not come soon enough and will probably not be adequate to keep pace with inflation.

Stacy Dean, the director of food assistance for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington social issues research and advocacy organization, estimates that the rising food prices have resulted in two fewer bags of groceries a month for the families most reliant on the program.

“We know food stamps are falling short $34 a month” of the monthly $576 that the government says it costs a family of four to eat nutritional meals, she said. “The sudden price increases on top of everything else like soaring fuel and health care have meant squeeze and strain that is unprecedented since the late 1970s.”

The declining buying power of food stamps has not gone unrecognized in Washington. In May, Congress passed a farm bill that would raise the minimum amount of food stamps that families receive, starting in October. The bill, which was passed over President Bush’s veto, will also raise for the first time since 1996 the amount of income that families of fewer than four can keep for costs like housing or fuel without having their benefits reduced.

This month, a coalition led by Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. called on Congress to immediately enact a temporary 20 percent increase in food stamps. Officials at the Agriculture Department, which administers the program, say there is no precedent for such an action. Families on food stamps have been hit hard across the nation, but perhaps not as hard as families in New York, where food costs are substantially higher than prices almost everywhere else, including other urban areas, according to the Food Research and Action Center, a research and advocacy group in Washington.

The more than one million New Yorkers on food stamps receive on average $107 a month in assistance, which is slightly higher than the average for the rest of the country. But it is not enough to close the gap in food costs, experts say.

Poor families interviewed in the New York area say that they are not going hungry — thanks in large part to the city’s strong network of 1,200 soup kitchens and food pantries — but that they have really felt the pinch. To cope, many say, they are doing without the basics.

June Jacobs-Cuffee of Brooklyn shares $120 a month in food stamps with her 19-year-old epileptic son. She says that even after her once-a-month trip to the food pantry at St. John’s Bread & Life in Brooklyn, she has had to give up red meat and is also cutting back on buying fresh fruits and sticking instead with canned goods and fruit cocktail.

“It is not a question of running out, yet,” she said. “But it does require very careful budgeting.”

The most recent census data showed that from 2003 to 2006 an average of 1.3 million New Yorkers identified themselves as “food insecure,” meaning that they were worried about being able to buy enough food to keep their families adequately fed. City officials are concerned that the food price increase has caused that number to increase significantly.

“I am much more worried about the state of hunger in New York City than I was 6 or 12 months ago,” said Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker. Ms. Quinn said that food pantries were increasingly complaining about being tapped out. She added, “What we are hearing from constituents is that they are having to make tougher and tougher decisions like to water down milk for kids or not purchase medication to keep money for food.”

Yessenia Villar, who lives in Washington Heights and works tutoring children in Spanish and English, knows about tough choices. She says it is getting harder to stretch her monthly $190 in food stamps to cover food for herself, her mother and her 5-year-old daughter. At the end of the month, she runs out of oil, rice and, most painful of all, plantains, which have gone from five for $1 to two for $1, she says.

She says she has stopped buying extras like summer sandals for herself, and has also given up treats like cookies and ice cream for her daughter. “I used to make all my groceries for $150 a month and then have a little extra,” she said. “Now it is, like, crazy.”

Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

Global Quandary: How to Feed a Growing Planet

http://www.redorbit.com/news/business/1444766/global_quandary_how_to_feed_a_growing_planet/

Posted on: Sunday, 22 June 2008, 03:00 CDT

In the lakeside capital of the central African country of Burundi, 40-year-old Lucie Nahimana on Thursday fed her family of six "black flour," a low-quality cassava root that many here have resorted to eating because they can't afford anything else.

Thousands of miles away, in the port city of Tianjin, China, physician Ning Aimin scanned the shelves of her supermarket for yogurt, a food that was practically unheard-of here a decade ago but has become a favorite of many of China's newly affluent.

On a chilly highway outside Gualeguaychu, Argentina, 10 trucks carrying enough rice to feed 3 million people in one day sat stranded on the side of the road, casualties of a 100-day-long farm strike that's paralyzed that country's giant grain industry.

These three episodes, all on Thursday, are interconnecting pieces of what's emerged as one of the biggest challenges facing the planet: how to feed humanity in this age of skyrocketing food and energy prices.

The problem is a global one, in which a breakdown anywhere in the food chain sets dire consequences in motion and in which the root causes range from rising consumption in Asia to growing biofuel production in the United States and Europe to dwindling supplies of water in the Middle East.

"The world is running now to keep up with demand," said Abdolreza Abbassian, a grain analyst with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. "Any interruption in the global picture affects supplies."

Already, some 800 million people around the world suffer from chronic food shortages, and millions more could go hungry because of the widening food crisis.

Rising food prices hit the urban poor the hardest, those who throng the slums of sprawling capitals such as Lagos, Nigeria, Manila, the Philippines and Caracas, Venezuela.

From 2007 to 2008, world prices for soybeans increased by 29 percent, while prices for wheat grew by 40 percent and rice prices jumped by 53 percent, according to a World Bank study. Food prices had stayed largely stable from 1995 until the end of 2006, the study found.

The recent price spike was the result of problems such as unfavorable weather in grain-exporting countries such as Australia and dwindling food stocks in Europe, according to the U.N. food organization. The coming year's food stocks promise to be thin as well, with floods in the U.S. Midwest and political turmoil in Argentina cutting back grain production.

Yet the problem is long-term, as the world's food-production machine fails to keep up with rising demand. The U.N. organization estimates that the problem won't go away for five to 10 years, and that's only if farmers around the world come up with new technology to increase efficiencies and boost production to meet the rising needs.

"The hope is that these high prices will inspire more production around the world," Abbassian said. "During this transition, however, people in poor countries are going to be the most affected."

That means folks such as Nahimana, who said Thursday that her monthly food budget of about $100 bought only about two-thirds of what it used to, so the family's meals are smaller and incredibly basic.

They usually eat just once a day, like most families in Bujumbura these days. Nahimana hasn't bought vegetables for several days, because soaring gas prices have made cabbage and other greens, which must be trucked in from the countryside, far too expensive.

In Burundi, where nine in 10 people live on less than $1 a day, a day's serving of rice or beans now costs more than the average daily wage.

"I know the children are not eating well, and that they go to bed hungry," the petite mother of four said. "I am afraid for their health."

Perhaps the region hit the hardest is sub-Saharan Africa, where, despite great agricultural potential, the majority of countries import most of their food. The U.N. food organization reports that of the 37 worst-affected countries worldwide, 21 are in Africa.

The crisis has exacerbated troubles in strife-torn Zimbabwe and in southern Somalia, where even locally grown corn is up to four times more expensive than a year ago, the U.N. reports.

In a report last week, the Africa Progress Panel, a group of experts chaired by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, warned: "Unless some way can be found to halt and reverse the current trend in food prices, there will be a significant increase in hunger, malnutrition, and in infant and child mortality."

Despite the hopes of food experts, however, the world's farmers are facing an ever-tougher battle to produce more to feed families such as Nahimana's.

As panic has rippled through some corners of the global grain market, prices for grains have grown more volatile. That frightens farmers already dealing with soaring costs for fertilizer, herbicides and fuel. Some wonder whether they should plant again and risk a sudden drop in prices.

That was the dilemma of Argentine farmer Haroldo Dorn, who was manning a roadblock near Gualeguaychu in central Argentina to prevent trucks from transporting grains to markets and ports.

The farmers were protesting a recent export-tax increase targeting soybean growers, a tax hike that the government says will force farmers to share with the rest of the country their record revenue from rising grain prices.

Farmers such as Dorn, however. say that soaring expenses and uncertainty about future prices have offset those rising profits.

"The need of the world is food, but what this government wants is to keep all the money for themselves," Dorn said. "We are just barely keeping up with rising costs."

On Thursday, rain fell on Gualeguaychu for the first time since February, which usually would be a sign for farmers to start planting wheat. This time, however, there was little enthusiasm for the break in the weather, as farmers stuck to the strike.

As a result, growers estimate that Argentina's wheat production will drop by a third this year.

"Argentina is a top exporter of wheat, corn and soybeans, and the farmers' actions have been one of the big factors in high prices," said Abbassian, of the U.N. food organization.

A few years ago, such isolated problems wouldn't have caused much global turmoil, as the world's food machine had enough reserve capacity to handle occasional bumps in the road.

Those margins have shrunk to nearly nothing, however, and one of the top reasons is growing consumption in China, India and other emerging world powers.

China's meteoric growth, in particular, already has stressed world supplies of energy and raw materials. Now the country's 1.3 billion people are demanding more and better food.

Having increased the amount of meat they eat by more than one-third in a little more than a decade, China soon will be competing for grains on the international market with nations such as Egypt, Haiti, Cameroon and Indonesia, where food riots and protests erupted earlier this year.

China also is losing production capacity, with urban sprawl gobbling up farmland at a steady rate. China has been losing about 1 percent of its arable land each year this decade, and officials say that the 470,000 square miles of arable land now available are barely 7,000 square miles above the minimum needed for food security.

The effects of the Chinese consumption boom have rippled across Asia and hit hardest in countries such as Afghanistan and the Philippines, which could barely feed themselves even in the best of times.

"People eat half as much," said Paul Risley, a spokesman for World Food Programme operations in Asia.

The Philippines was once a model rice producer. But decades of neglect of agricultural policy and a population that's surged to 91 million have turned it into the world's biggest rice importer.

"They've doubled in population in 30 years," Risley said. "But they aren't even growing the amount of rice they were 30 years ago."

In booming China, Ning, the physician, was on the receiving end of the world's new food balance. Going about her once-a-week shopping trip, she presented the perfect picture of her country's new, cosmopolitan middle class.

She drove to her market of choice, Carrefour, a French chain that's China's largest foreign retailer, in her South Korean-built Kia sedan.

At the supermarket, she cruised aisles piled high with domestic and imported fruits and vegetables, including U.S.-grown lemons and Red Delicious apples, bananas from the Philippines, and oranges and durian _ a fruit with a powerful rancid smell but a sweet flavor _ from Thailand.

"Besides Carrefour and Wal-Mart, we also have Tesco and Vanguard supermarkets," Ning said, reeling off the names of the mega-store operators that now have a presence in nearly every major Chinese city.

Outside the New Century Square shopping center, 22-year-old Lin Hongwei prepared lamb skewers on a charcoal grill outside a noodle shop, where business was brisk, he said.

"Things are so much better now than when I was a kid," Lin said. "Salaries are higher. Food is better."

US marshalls seize allegedly contaminated pet food

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/19/america/Petco-Lawsuit.php



CHICAGO: Federal marshals carrying a search warrant visited the Joliet distribution center of PETCO Animal Supplies Inc. on Thursday, seizing animal food products that were allegedly contaminated.

The seizure came one day after the government filed a lawsuit and obtained the warrant to seize products at the warehouse operated by the San Diego-based animal food and supply company.

There were no known public health risks posed by the pet food and no incidents of human or animal illness have been traced to the products, U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald and other officials said in a statement issued by his office.

Since the government's last inspection, PETCO has "acted aggressively to address each and every concern that was raised," said Kevin Whalen, PETCO vice president of corporate communications.

The company is "committed" to fully complying with recommendations from the Food and Drug Administration, and continues to discuss any ongoing concerns with them, Whalen said


The lawsuit alleges that food stored at the warehouse, unless kept in glass or metal containers, is subject to condemnation because it was stored under conditions that allegedly were unsanitary.

The FDA inspected the warehouse in April and found live and dead rodents and birds on or around the pet food containers, according to the lawsuit.

Rodent and bird droppings were found throughout the warehouse, the lawsuit said. Inspectors found holes in the walls of the warehouse that allowed birds and rodents to enter.

An inspection in May produced a similar finding, the government said.

The warehouse supplies pet food to stores in Illinois, Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin, the government said in a statement issued by Fitzgerald's office.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

The End of Food

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/20/RV34111PC3.DTL&type=books


By Paul Roberts
Houghton Mifflin; 390 pages; $26

With at least 100 million people in 22 countries threatened by the global food crisis, world leaders are meeting in Rome to discuss a joint response. But to settle on solutions, we must understand root causes.

To explain this crisis, some put forth a simple story of shrinking supply: Severe drought in Australia decimated the harvest of one of the world's largest wheat exporters. Biofuel production in the United States alone is diverting 33 percent of our corn harvest to feed automobiles, not people.

But these are just proximate causes, others argue. The real culprit? The global food system itself: its inherent vulnerability, lack of democracy and increasingly concentrated power. Sure, droughts and biofuels have affected global supplies, but in Paul Roberts' new book, "The End of Food," we hear the "It's the system, stupid" argument. Though its ink was drying before this current crisis hit CNN's news cycle, "The End of Food" helps us connect the dots.

As more of the planet shifts to our centralized, industrial model of food procurement and our over-processed, fast-food style of food consumption, we are careening ever faster, Roberts argues, down an unsustainable road.

This global food system is wasteful at its core: "By one estimate, it takes 2,200 calories of hydrocarbon energy (from oil, natural gas, or coal) to produce a can of soda that contains just 200 calories of food energy." Roberts takes particular aim at factory-farmed meat, with its inherent squandering of abundance: Feedlot cattle, for example, require 20 pounds of grain to make a single pound of beef. (This conversion ratio is much higher than other estimates, because Roberts accounts for all of a cow's weight, including what is inedible.) And our food fate is increasingly determined by a cabal of companies controlling the market, from beef to bananas. Roberts peppers his pages with examples such as these: Chiquita and Dole control more than half of the world's banana trade; 21 cents of every dollar we Americans spend for food is now spent at Wal-Mart.

Roberts also highlights the international lending and trade policies, influenced by the interests of U.S.-based elites, which have forced countries to open their markets, creating vulnerability to the price spikes we see today. Remember the East Asian financial crisis of the '90s? The "tigers" - South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan and the Philippines - had nearly negotiated a $120 billion bailout when the International Monetary Fund announced "the money wouldn't be released until the ... governments promised to buy substantially more U.S. grain." The IMF also "sent Indonesian president Suharto a letter demanding that his country abolish all tariffs on imported rice - demands that were soon expanded to sugar, flour, soybeans, and corn." They did; they got the loan. Guess which countries are among the hardest hit by today's food crisis?

Indeed, Roberts' book might more aptly have been titled "The End of Our Oil-Addicted, Energy-Intensive, Monopolized Food System," but that doesn't really roll off the tongue. (Plus, it wouldn't have so clearly been tied to his previous book, "The End of Oil.")

As someone whose shelves are cluttered with food-politics tomes, I appreciated the inclusion of historic details often overlooked, such as the connection Roberts highlights between the so-called green revolution and our country's Cold War strategy. I also appreciated how Roberts often presents opposing sides of an argument, though the occasional sections where he doesn't are notable: In a short passage on "the 'meat revolution' that made us human," as he calls it, Robert neglects to mention the opposing version of this evolutionary story.

Roberts is strongest when he discusses, at the book's end, what we can do. With the industrial food system responsible for as much as one-third of global greenhouse-gas emissions (and livestock production alone accounting for 18 percent of emissions), now is not the time for half-measures. Sure, we can (and should) make constructive consumer choices, Roberts argues. He passionately calls for us to head back to our kitchens, for instance. And he writes that "if we're to have any chance of meeting future food demand in a sustainable fashion, lowering our meat consumption will be absolutely essential."

But he also calls for a "kind of direct action": "That means lobbying Congress to reform the farm program ... It means demanding that Congress increase funding for research into alternative farming methods ... It means lobbying school boards to improve lunch programs and dump junk food. It means working with the plethora of local and regional groups who are already building regional food systems. Ultimately, it means taking back control of your own food." In 2012, we will have another chance to rewrite our nation's multibillion dollar Farm Bill. Until then, see you at the school board meeting, city council offices - and in the kitchen. {sbox}

Anna Lappé is the co-author of "Hope's Edge" (Tarcher) and "Grub" (Tarcher). E-mail her at books@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page M - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Experts: Bird flu may worsen global food crisis

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-06-21-bird-flu_N.htm


KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The worst of the bird flu threat is over but the fight to eliminate the disease from poultry is weak — a situation that could worsen the global food crisis, health experts warned on Friday.

"The peak is over, but we still are dealing with many outbreaks, small outbreaks," Juan Lubroth, a senior official with the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization, said at an international medical conference.

"It's like a boiling pot, and we need to keep the lid on that before it gets worse," Lubroth said at the 13th International Congress on Infectious Diseases, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Bird flu is still active in 10 countries, down from 60 that have been affected since 2003. Hot spots include China, Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Vietnam.

Lubroth, the head of the FAO's Emergency Prevention System, said that "drawbacks and weaknesses" remain in the fight to eliminate the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus from the poultry sector.

He said death of poultry especially affects the poor, 80% of whom own livestock for their livelihood worldwide.

Lubroth said poultry is an important, inexpensive protein source for people who wonder every day, "What are we going to have for dinner tonight, or what will be available for tomorrow?"

He warned that failure to protect their food sources could worsen the global food crisis, caused by rising prices of rice, corn and other staples.

Lubroth said 240 million birds have died or been slaughtered, and millions of people's livelihoods shattered, because of bird flu.

Veterinary services around the world need to be strengthened and more experts trained, while reporting must be more transparent, he said, adding that countries have to use more surveillance and implement policies to deal with the disease. "We fail to see that political commitment," he said.

Besides the threat to the food situation, bird flu could also endanger human lives more directly.

Sporadic suspected human-to-human transmission of H5N1 has been reported in Hong Kong, Vietnam and Indonesia, but none of the cases has been proven. Experts believe the virus remains difficult for humans to catch.

They fear, however, that it could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans and trigger a pandemic that some say could quickly kill millions of people who would have no immunity to a new flu virus.

"If we want to avert a human pandemic, we must tackle the disease at the source — the source being poultry, the source being poor hygiene, the source being lack of regulatory infrastructures to improve the poultry production sector," Lubroth said.

Still, there was no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission of H5N1, Nikki Shindo, an infection control specialist at the World Health Organization, told the conference. Bird flu is "not posing a great public health risk" to humans clinically, he said.

Shindo said that 385 people have reportedly contracted the disease since 2003, and that 241 of them have died, about half of them in Indonesia.

Sardikin Giriputro, who has been at he forefront of Indonesia's campaign against bird flu, said that despite all preparations, "no country is prepared enough for the pandemic."


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Friday, June 20, 2008

PETA says KFC in Canada to change slaughter method

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/apwire/2e0c6b4a5ee2424eba8d7f114e730ad1.htm


Animal-rights group ends campaign against KFC in Canada, says slaughter method to be changed


NEW YORK (Associated Press) - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has ended its protest campaign against KFC in Canada, which pledged to improve treatment of chickens purchased for its restaurants.

Norfolk-based PETA said it stopped its five-year campaign this week because KFC Canada plans to buy from suppliers that slaughter chickens by removing oxygen from their atmosphere so they die painlessly, rather than slitting their throats.

KFC Canada also will add a vegan option to its menu.

KFC Canada President Steve Langford said in a statement that ethical treatment of chickens is important to the company.

PETA will continue its campaign against KFC outside Canada. It is calling on KFC's parent company in the United States, Yum Brands, to make the same changes.

Settlement Reached in Castleberry’s Botulism Lawsuit

http://www.newsinferno.com/archives/3305


A settlement was just reached in a federal botulism contamination lawsuit filed by Emanuel Cisneros who sued Bumble Bee foods and its subsidiary, Castleberry’s, for unspecified damages linked to his children’s extended illness.  The children, Marissa and Samuel Cisneros, were hospitalized last June and were subsequently included in The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) listing of patients who ate botulism- tainted Austex brand hot dog chili sauce.

Castelberry’s denies liability under the settlement agreement, but following the outbreak, Castleberry’s recalled a wide variety of products nationwide and closed its Georgia plant.  The amount paid to the Cisneros family is confidential.

Last year, the CDC linked Castleberry’s Hot Dog Chili Sauces to at least four cases of botulism poisoning in Texas and Indiana.  Ultimately, 90 varieties of products and 27 brands of foods manufactured by Castleberry’s were so infested with botulism that some cans were actually bursting.  In that recall, at least eight cases of botulism were reported and covered two years worth of production on one processing line.  Botulism is a rare disease, with fewer than 30 cases reported annually; nearly all botulism cases are related to home canning.  The Castleberry’s outbreak is the first to be linked to commercial canning in over 40 years.  The affected products were produced at the Augusta factory between April 30 and May 22, 2007 on a cooker that had malfunctioned.  To guard against the formation of botulism toxin, canned foods are heated during processing to kill the bacteria.  The cooker at the Castleberry’s factory was dropping cans into cool water while they were still hot.  The company says it followed procedures to check the products before they left the factory.

Botulism bacteria thrive in warm, moist environments, which is what is found in a can of food.  As the bacteria reproduce inside a can, gasses are emitted and the building pressure of the gas inside the can often causes it to rupture.  Clostridium botulinum can grow in canned foods that haven’t been properly heated during processing, creating a nerve toxin that causes a severe paralyzing illness that can be fatal if left untreated and is characterized by blurred vision, drooping eyelids, muscle weakness, slurred speech, and difficulty swallowing.  If not treated promptly, botulism can paralyze breathing muscles and patients can spend months on ventilators until the toxin wears off.  Unlike other food borne pathogens, botulism toxins can be absorbed through the skin and even inhaled, which means even people who never ate the contaminated product could be at risk for the deadly illness.  Last summer’s concern was—in part—over the potential of cans to rupture releasing toxins into the air.

Meanwhile, earlier last month, the Castleberry’s plant was forced to close—again—after a February 27 inspection by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and the US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) revealed deviations in some equipment operations on a processing line that was not related to last summer’s recall but that could have resulted in undercooking of the meat.  Because under-processing caused the botulism outbreak, the plant’s operating permit was suspended.

Last fall, Castleberry’s’ re-branded its line to American Originals, with a redesigned label.

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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

More than 350 sickened by Salmonella outbreak

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1819407920080618


By Lisa Baertlein

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. food safety officials on Wednesday said more than 350 people have fallen ill in a Salmonella outbreak linked to certain types of tomatoes.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 383 people in 30 states have been infected with Salmonella Saintpaul, a rare strain of the bacteria.

The most recent report of onset is June 5 and at least 48 people have been hospitalized, CDC said.

The rise in cases is due to increased monitoring by states and the completion of a significant amount of lab work, CDC said.

"We do not think the outbreak is over," Robert Tauxe, deputy director of CDC's division of foodborne, bacterial and mycotic diseases.

Food safety experts have linked the outbreak to tainted raw round, plum and Roma tomatoes and have not yet identified the source of contamination.

David Acheson, director of food safety for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said investigators continue to study a cluster of cases involving nine people in a single geographic location who ate at two outlets in the same restaurant chain.

The Chicago Department of Public Health told the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday that it reported a cluster of nine salmonella cases at Adobo Grill restaurants in two parts of the city.

The restaurant operators told the Tribune in a statement there is no way to know whether the produce it buys harbors Salmonella bacteria.

When asked about the Chicago Health Department's comments, FDA's Acheson cited confidentiality requirements and declined to give the name or the location of the restaurant chain.

Health experts have repeatedly said the outbreak has not been linked to a single restaurant, grocery or retail chain.

Most produce in the United States is not tracked from the farm -- and that has made the job of finding the source of the current outbreak more difficult.

"We may not ultimately know the farm where these came from," Acheson said.

Meanwhile, investigators are focusing on Mexico and central and southern Florida, which were the biggest suppliers of tomatoes at the time of the outbreak.

"There is certainly a high likelihood that they came from Mexico or Florida," Acheson said.

(Editing by Leslie Gevirtz and Andre Grenon)

 
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hole-y cows.

China to send food, product inspectors to US: official

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jrMs47DivIY2JWUVDZ9jNZTteLpA

BEIJING (AFP) — Beijing plans to send food safety and product quality experts to the United States to inspect goods made there in response to Washington's plans to do the same in China, state media reported Wednesday.

The United States proposed sending American inspectors to China in December after millions of items manufactured in Chinese factories were recalled globally because they were considered unsafe.

China made the announcement during talks concluding later Wednesday in Maryland, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing Li Changjiang, head of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

"Based on the principle of reciprocity, China plans to station food safety and product quality personnel at its embassy and consulates in the United States at necessary times," Li said.

Product safety was a key issue during the talks that began Tuesday, where the two countries were expected to sign a 10-year agreement on energy and environmental protection.

Premier Wen Jiabao vowed in March to ensure China's product safety monitoring met international standards after a string of scandals over Chinese-made goods ranging from food to toys.

Beijing revoked the export licences of 700 toy factories over safety failings last week after inspecting all 3,540 toy firms with the permits.

The tighter monitoring also prompted the government to ban the sale of nearly 600 foreign-made food items last month, including some from major US companies.

Two flavours of Procter & Gamble's Pringles crisps imported from the United States were found to contain a chemical which could cause cancer.

Coca-Cola's berry-flavoured Fanta soft-drink -- imported from South Korea -- was also banned for containing too much benzoic acid, which can damage the liver and the kidneys.

Beijing also recalled Peter Pan peanut butter made in the United States by ConAgra Foods last year, after batches sold in China were linked to an American salmonella outbreak.

Corn Jumps to Record as Floods in Midwest Threaten U.S. Crops



By Jae Hur and Jeff Wilson

June 16 (Bloomberg) -- Corn climbed to a record approaching $8 a bushel after storms pounded crops in the U.S., the largest producer and exporter, and caused what may be the worst flooding in the Midwest since 1993.

The flooding probably will reduce U.S. planted acreage by more than 3.3 million acres, or 3.8 percent of the total forecast by the government, according to a Farm Futures magazine call-in poll of 584 growers last week. The U.S. Department of Agriculture will update its weekly crop-conditions report after the close of trading today.

Corn rose as much as 3.5 percent as Midwest floods probably will cause ``hundreds of millions of dollars'' of damage, according to the National Weather Service. U.S. inventories may fall 53 percent to a 13-year low before next year's harvest, the USDA said June 10.

High food prices ``are here to stay'' as governments divert resources to make biofuels, amass stockpiles and limit exports, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman of Nestle SA, the world's largest food company, said today in an interview in Kuala Lumpur.

Corn futures for December delivery were unchanged at $7.65 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade. Earlier, the price rose to a record $7.915, climbing to an all-time high for the eighth straight session. The price has gained 16 percent in the past five sessions and 83 percent in the past year on soaring demand for biofuels and livestock feed.

Crop Insurers

Rains in Iowa and Illinois that have left farms underwater will lead to losses for crop insurers including Wells Fargo & Co., Ace Ltd. and Deere & Co., an industry group said.

Wells Fargo's Rural Community Insurance Services unit has had 6,000 loss notices from farmers because of the flooding, triple the amount from a year earlier, according to National Crop Insurance Services, a non-profit organization in Overland Park, Kansas.

Most policyholders of Rain & Hail LLC, an Ace affiliate, will have a loss, the group said today in an e-mail, citing preliminary figures from the companies.

The United Nations estimated global food imports will exceed $1 trillion for the first time this year. In Egypt, the most populous nation in the Middle East, bread subsidies account for 5.5 percent of the national budget.

Mexico, Yemen and 31 other nations face social unrest because of soaring food and energy costs, the World Bank says. Argentina's crop exports have been disrupted by farmer and trucker protests since March.

`Serious Challenge'

``Elevated commodity prices, especially of oil and food, pose a serious challenge to stable growth worldwide, have serious implications for the most vulnerable and may increase global inflationary pressure,'' finance ministers from the Group of Eight nations said in a statement after a June 14 meeting in Osaka, Japan.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for a 50 percent increase in food output by 2030, saying failure to feed the world's growing population will spark civil unrest and starvation. A 60 percent gain in food prices since the start of 2007 has spurred riots in more than 30 countries.

Consumer prices last month probably rose the most since 1997 in the U.K. and the fastest in 16 years in the 15-nation euro area, while U.S. producer prices are predicted to have gained 1 percent from April, according to forecasts by economists. Global food prices have jumped 51 percent in the past year, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.

Crude oil has almost doubled in the past year. The price rose to a record $139.89 a barrel today.

`Inflation Building'

``Inflation pressures are building around the world,'' stoked by food and fuel prices, said David Cohen, director of Asian economic forecasting at Action Economics in Singapore. That is ``squeezing household budgets, especially the poorest, and company profits,'' he said.

Parts of the Midwest may receive as much as 2 inches (5.1 centimeters) of rain in the next five days, according to the National Weather Service. Temperatures will average below normal in the next week, slowing the drying of saturated fields, government data show.

As much as 14 inches of rain fell in the Midwest in the past two weeks, and some fields had as much as five times the normal amount of rain since June 2.

Almost 16 percent of the respondents in the Farm Futures survey said they will plant less than 80 percent of the corn acres they intended this year, which already had been expected to decline. A USDA survey in March showed farmers intended to plant 86 million acres, down 8.1 percent from last year's record.

Argentine Protests

Argentine farmers intensified protests against higher export taxes after a farm leader was arrested by police, threatening to spark food shortages and halt the flow of grains in the country. Farmers began their fourth strike in three months yesterday, withholding crops and blocking roads.

The country is the world's third-largest soybean exporter, behind the U.S. and Brazil, and second to the U.S. for corn.

Corn is the biggest U.S. crop, valued at $52.1 billion in 2007, followed by soybeans at $26.8 billion, government figures show.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jae Hur in Singapore at jhur1@bloomberg.net; Jeff Wilson in Chicago at jwilson29@bloomberg.net

Monday, June 16, 2008

FDA Clears Two States, Part of Mexico as Source of Salmonella

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aBBDMwP.lIs4&refer=home

By Andres R. Martinez

June 15 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration added New Mexico, Indiana and one Mexican state to its list of places that are cleared of being the source of an outbreak of salmonella from contaminated tomatoes that has sickened 228 people since April.

The FDA has now cleared 37 states, Puerto Rico and parts of Florida as the source of the outbreak, according to the Web site of the agency, based near Washington, D.C. Six countries, including Israel and Guatemala, have been cleared.

The state of Baja California was the first area in Mexico to be certified safe, according to the Web site. Tomatoes grown there may be exported to the U.S. only if the state agriculture agency has inspected them. Mexico, which harvested 2.3 million metric tons of tomatoes in 2007, accounts for 84 percent of the tomatoes the U.S. imports.

Mexican and U.S. growers have complained that the government has moved too slowly to certify that produce from areas is safe. Sales of Mexican tomatoes in the U.S. have slowed, according to the country's agriculture ministry.

Mexican officials are scheduled to meet with the FDA tomorrow to discuss how they can speed the process to certify that Mexico was not the source of the contaminated tomatoes.

New Mexico and Indiana are two of the 23 states in the U.S. where cases of salmonella have been reported. On June 13, the FDA said that nine people fell ill at two restaurants that were part of the same chain. The agency declined to name the chain or its locations.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andres R. Martinez in Mexico City at amartinez28@bloomberg.net

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Alaska salmon may bear scars of global warming

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ichfish15-2008jun15,0,587682.story?page=1




ANANA, Alaska -- With a sickening thud, another hefty and handsome salmon lands in the waste barrel, headed for the dogs.

"See, it's all of the biggest, best-looking fish," said Pat Moore, waving a stogie at the pile of discards. "It breaks my heart. My dogs cannot eat all that. The maggots will get them first."


More Alaskan salmon caught here end up in the dog pot these days, their orange-pink flesh fouled by disease that scientists have correlated with warmer water in the Yukon River.

The sorting of winners and losers at Moore's riverbank fish camp illustrates what scientists have been predicting will accompany global warming: Cold-temperature barriers are giving way, allowing parasites, bacteria and other disease-spreading organisms to move toward higher latitudes.

"Climate change isn't going to increase infectious diseases but change the disease landscape," said marine ecologist Kevin D. Lafferty, who studies parasites for the U.S. Geological Survey. "And some of these surprises are not going to be pretty."

The emergence of disease in Alaska's most prized salmon has come as a shock to fishermen and fisheries managers. Alaskan wild salmon has been an uncommon success story among over-exploited fisheries, with healthy runs and robust catches that fetch ever higher prices at fish markets and high-end restaurants in Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo and London.

Fishermen and regulators who have cooperated to save species from overfishing and local environmental hazards have been caught unprepared to deal with forces beyond their control: how to manage a fishery for climate change.

The return of the king -- or chinook -- salmon is eagerly anticipated along the Yukon. The biggest of the salmon species, these kings arrive with a muscular flash of the tail, sun glinting off a speckled palette of blues and greens fading to silver and red.

Savvy buyers from Japan converge on the docks near the river's mouth to purchase these fish that have bulked up with extra fat to swim more than 2,000 miles, across Alaska, to spawn in the stream of their birth.

As a fierce defender of the fish's reputation, Gene Sandone, a regional supervisor for Alaska's Fish and Game Department, was less than receptive to complaints from Tanana fishermen such as Moore that something was wrong.

The chinook salmon they pulled from the Yukon River about 700 miles inland didn't smell right. It wasn't an instant, gag-inducing stench. It was more subtle but grew into an unpleasant odor of fruit rotting in the hot sun.

More important, the flesh turned mealy. The salmon didn't dry right in smokehouses either. Instead of turning into rich red strips of salmon jerky, they turned black and oily like strips of greasy rotten mango.

"If you don't weed out the bad ones, it'll stink up the whole smokehouse," Moore said, wielding a knife on his cutting table. "I only want the good stuff. I don't want second-rate fish."

Salmon jerky strips are a staple among the Native Americans and subsistence fishermen in rural outposts such as Tanana, a village of 270 people. "It'll keep you warm in the winter," said Lorene Moore, Pat's wife and a native of the village. In Alaska's bigger cities, these strips are a prized delicacy, fetching $20 or more a pound.

When Bill Fliris, another Tanana fisherman, first noticed the problem in the late 1980s, he bundled up some salmon jerky strips and shipped them to a state Fish and Game biologist. A few weeks later, the biologist said it was "the damnedest thing -- they disappeared out of the freezer. You know: free strips."

The next year, Fliris shipped more samples, and this time they were tested. But the state Fish and Game lab found nothing amiss.

A friendly federal biologist advised the local fishermen to send samples, including hearts and organs that were covered with tiny pimples, to the Center for Fish Disease Research at Oregon State University.

The Oregon lab quickly identified it as "white spot disease," caused by a microscopic parasite called Ichthyophonus hoferi. Ich (pronounced "ick") is a well-known disease, harmless to humans, that was blamed for devastating losses in the herring fishery in Scandinavia. A similar parasite can infect aquarium fish.

The portion of Yukon salmon with Ich grew each year. Fishermen were throwing away as much as 30% of their catch, forcing them to catch more fish to fill their cache for the winter.

"The Alaskan Department of Fish and Game wasn't interested," Fliris said. "They said, 'There's no money to study this. It's a natural disease. There's nothing we can do about it.'"

So Fliris contacted an outsider: Richard M. Kocan, a fish disease expert at the University of Washington. Lining up a federal grant, Kocan began to test the fish in 2000, the same year the king salmon run suffered an unexpected temporary collapse that forced the closure of the river's commercial fishery.

At the mouth of the Yukon, where the commercial gill netters operate, 25% to 30% of the chinook salmon were infected, Kocan found. But the fish usually did not show signs of the disease.


The same proportion were infected at midriver near Tanana, about halfway to the Canadian border. But here, nearly a third of the fish showed the salt-like flecks on their hearts and other organs, and their mealy flesh released the telltale smell of putrid fruit.

Kocan went upstream to the spawning grounds near Whitehorse, Canada, and found that the proportion of infected fish dropped dramatically. But why? It didn't seem logical that the fish were recovering during the last part of their stressful 2,200-mile swim, accomplished over many weeks without eating. "The working hypothesis," Kocan said, "is that they died before they made it to the spawning grounds."

Tracking what happens to these fish is difficult. The Yukon turns mocha-brown in the summer, when its swift waters carry a load of rock flour released by rock-pulverizing glaciers and other sediment. Salmon that perish sink out of sight.

To test his theory, Kocan set up a laboratory experiment that compared the swimming stamina of infected rainbow trout with that of healthy trout. He used a chamber with water swift enough to exhaust a healthy fish in about 10 minutes. The infected fish lasted about two minutes. "It's like asking someone with heart disease to run a 10K race," Kocan said. "He's not going to do very well." That left a question: Why did the previously undetected disease show up in the late 1980s and resurface every year since?

Kocan and his students scrutinized all the potential variables and found only one significant change: Average river water temperatures had been rising over the last three decades. The warming began earlier each spring, following an earlier breakup of the river's ice. The June temperatures showed the greatest increase, about 6 to 8 degrees warmer, and June is when king salmon return from the ocean and begin their long upriver migration to spawn.

Unlike warm-blooded animals, the body temperature of salmon fluctuates with the temperature of surrounding waters. Laboratory studies of Ich infections in trout, a close cousin, have revealed that the incidence of disease and death rises as water warms, especially above 59 degrees.

Kocan spent five summers on the Yukon River studying the parasite, creating an uproar among fishermen by sharing his findings directly with them, rather than allowing state Fish and Game officials to review the data first.

He suddenly found his funding drying up after objections from Alaskan representatives on the committee that doles out research dollars. "I've essentially been blackballed from working on the Yukon," said Kocan, whose work has since been accepted and published in peer-reviewed journals. "There's one fellow specifically who does not like our results: Gene Sandone. He doesn't want to hear the story and change his management practices."

Sandone denied playing any part in this: "I didn't blackball Richard Kocan. Dr. Kocan is free to put in a proposal and argue his point. He just has to get it through the technical committee."

The clash comes over the implications of Kocan's thesis. He believes that as much as 20% of king salmon are dying en route to the spawning grounds. If so, fisheries managers would have to cut back the commercial catch by at least that amount to keep the run healthy.

Sandone has an alternative theory, which has not been tested. He believes that the sick fish, weakened by the parasite, swim along the slower-moving edge of the river, where a disproportionate number get caught by fishing nets and fish wheels that line the banks.

In other words, subsistence fishermen like Pat Moore are simply catching most of the sick fish. The healthy ones swim just out of reach, deeper in the river, headed straight for Canada.

"That's my theory -- that they are not dying on the way," Sandone said. "Even if they are dying on the way, so what?" His department limits the catch based on how many fish escape all the nets and make it to the spawning grounds to reproduce. That's been going well, he said, except for last year, when the number of fish that made it to Canada fell 50% below the minimum spelled out in a U.S.-Canadian agreement.

Sandone is retiring later this year, after 26 years as a state official. The fishermen in Tanana, who scoff at his theory, say they are delighted to see him go. They hope the state will be less hostile to studying the disease and trying to figure out what to do about it.

Besides supporting fishermen, salmon are a keystone species in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, supporting wildlife from birds to bears and orcas. A crash could cripple dependent creatures.

Mary Ruckelshaus, a federal biologist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, has been running climate models to peer into the future for Pacific Northwest salmon. Those models predict that salmon will become extinct without aggressive efforts to preserve the clear, cool streams needed for spawning, such as planting trees to shade streams and curtailing the amount of water siphoned off by farmers.

"It's sort of a time bomb," Ruckelshaus said. "If people don't have a plan for it, it can be disastrous when it hits." Her models didn't factor in the potential for emerging diseases, such as the one that Kocan, her former professor, has been studying.

Kocan views Ichthyophonus as a classic emerging disease. He pointed out that salmon, a lucrative catch, had been scrutinized by scientists and fishermen for decades, and the disease had never before been reported. In the last decade, it has shown up in salmon on the Yukon, Kuskokwim and Taku rivers in Alaska and on various rivers in British Columbia and Russia.

It has also been detected in recent years in rockfish and smaller noncommercial fish in Puget Sound and elsewhere off the coasts of Oregon and Washington, and in freshwater trout on Idaho farms.

It's the kind of redistribution of disease that can be expected with climate change, Kocan said: "Everything is getting warmer, and that's how climate change is going to redistribute all kinds of disease. Parasites have their optimum conditions -- upper and lower limits. We'll notice where they show up but not necessarily where they disappear."

Ichthyophonus is among a class of ancient parasitic microbes that can move fast, taking advantage of new niches using age-old tricks that have kept them around for billions of years.

None of this comforts Pat Moore, a musher with dozens of dogs, and others who rely on the bounty of the Yukon River to make their living. It's a culture that lives on the edge and cannot stomach waste.

"I don't want to kill fish for the sake of killing them," said Moore, as he expertly sliced a king into narrow strips.

"I want to use the damned things."

ken.weiss@latimes.com