Search
Forum Home | Login
terpfan1980
terpfan1980
Join Date 08/2004
+13

British food anyone? ooops, not so fast!

Katrina Food Aid Blocked by U.S. Rules

October 14, 2005 8:26:43 PM from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
More news from the Washington Post. Hope no one was looking for any British cuisine while doing relief work, or while looking for food once displaced by Katrina.

Silly government rules...




Katrina Food Aid Blocked by U.S. Rules

Meals From Britain Sit in Warehouse

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 14, 2005; Page A01

In the early days of September, as military helicopters plucked desperate New Orleanians from rooftops and Red Cross shelters swelled with the displaced, nearly 400,000 packaged meals landed on a tarmac at Little Rock Air Force Base and were whisked by tractor-trailer to Louisiana.
But most of the $5.3 million worth of food never reached the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Instead, because of fears about mad cow disease and a long-standing ban on British beef, the rations routinely consumed by British soldiers have sat stacked in a warehouse in Arkansas for more than a month.
Now, with some of the food set to expire in early 2006 and U.S. taxpayers spending $16,000 a month to store the meals, the State Department is quickly and quietly looking for a needy country to take them.
In a disaster recovery effort that has been widely criticized as slow, inefficient and at times wasteful, the long and costly journey of the British rations is a tale of good intentions colliding with a cumbersome bureaucracy.
No fewer than six federal agencies or departments had a role in accepting, distributing and rejecting the food. Even now, there remains a disagreement within the Bush administration over which office shipped the meals to 14 locations in Louisiana and which is responsible for paying the mounting storage fees.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which oversees domestic disasters, "knew from e-mails the stuff was moving out there, but we never had control or said anything about it," said spokesman Kim Pease. "It was under control of" the U.S. Agency for International Development, he said.
But USAID spokesman Kevin Sheridan said his agency simply provided logistic support, helping deliver to the Gulf Coast region foreign donations that were acquired by the State Department.
A spokesman for the British Embassy, citing diplomatic protocol in requesting anonymity, said he was puzzled by the turn of events.
"There was a specific request for emergency ration packs, and we responded to that," he said. "We had no reason to believe there would be a problem."
What is clear is that by late on Sept. 8, inspectors from the Agriculture Department halted the distribution because the packaged meals violated import laws that "no beef or poultry of any kind is accepted from Great Britain," spokeswoman Terri Teuber said.
Since 1997, the United States has banned beef products from Britain and several other European countries that have been affected by bovine spongiform encephalopathy, known as mad cow disease. A degenerative disease of the central nervous system, BSE is fatal in cattle and can lead to a similar illness in humans called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
"There was a careful review of the law to determine whether there was some flexibility, and at this point that has not been the case," Teuber said.


... more at linked article


Now, I will say that I am glad that we remain concerned about Mad Cow disease and other potential problems, but it is ridiculous that we leave food sitting and rotting when so many in the world are going hungry. Why even accept the food if we aren't going to use it?

I'm glad that it seems we're trying to find somewhere to send the food before it's ruined, but I'm sure someone, somewhere, will accuse us all of trying to poison others by giving them this second hand food.

What a crazy world.....
politics
Locked Post
Search this post
Advanced Search
Subscription Options
Reason for Karma (Optional)
Successfully updated karma reason!
terpfan1980
terpfan1980
Join Date 08/2004
+13
Reply #1 October 15, 2005 8:12:56 AM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
Still an opportunity to speak up and snag some Brit MRE equivalents. Just contact any of the agencies involved in this silly snafu.
Reason for Karma (Optional)
Successfully updated karma reason!
terpfan1980
JillUser
Join Date 11/2003
+17
Reply #2 October 15, 2005 12:54:05 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
I don't see anything silly if there has been a ban on beef from the UK since 1997. If there was a specific request, it should have cited that ban if it didn't. Can you imagine the devastaion if Katrina victims and relief workers started suffering from the food they were given? I think the silly thing is that with the land of plenty that the US is, that we request food be sent from any other country.
Reason for Karma (Optional)
Successfully updated karma reason!
terpfan1980
Gideon MacLeish
Join Date 06/2004
+1
Reply #3 October 15, 2005 1:24:38 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
And this, in reverse, is the primary reason we have difficulty feeding people in third world nations. Food gets held up in the ports.

Excellent piece, terp.
Reason for Karma (Optional)
Successfully updated karma reason!
terpfan1980
Abanamore
Join Date 01/0001
+13
Reply #4 October 15, 2005 1:30:01 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
I think it's absolutely stupid that we still ban UK beef when there hasn't been a case there for several years. Not very free market at all, Mr Bush. What an insult to his good friend Mr Blair!!!
Reason for Karma (Optional)
Successfully updated karma reason!
terpfan1980
Dr Guy
Join Date 09/2004
+129
Reply #5 October 15, 2005 1:42:43 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums

don't see anything silly if there has been a ban on beef from the UK since 1997. If there was a specific request, it should have cited that ban if it didn't. Can you imagine the devastaion if Katrina victims and relief workers started suffering from the food they were given? I think the silly thing is that with the land of plenty that the US is, that we request food be sent from any other country.

yet the English consume it regularly.  I think the emphasis on over caution is well put.  Starving to death, while euphoric, is still death.  If they are willing to eat it for their most important people, we are just being turds for rejecting it.

Safe turds, as I know we dont have to worry about law suits.  But then that is our problem, not the givers is it?

Reason for Karma (Optional)
Successfully updated karma reason!
terpfan1980
Dr Guy
Join Date 09/2004
+129
Reply #6 October 15, 2005 1:43:46 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums

Mr Bush. What an insult to his good friend Mr Blair!!!

It is not Bush.  It is as Terp said, bureaucracy.  no less shameful tho.

Reason for Karma (Optional)
Successfully updated karma reason!
terpfan1980
terpfan1980
Join Date 08/2004
+13
Reply #7 October 15, 2005 5:32:42 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
And this, in reverse, is the primary reason we have difficulty feeding people in third world nations. Food gets held up in the ports.


Actually, what is worse is that we do send food stuffs off to several third world nations and then have much the same thing happen there. The nation or it's citizens refuses to accept the food because of concerns it might be tainted, or in some cases because of concerns that the food stuff include antibiotics, steroids, or hormones or other bio-engineering components that changes the food enough that the potential recipient doesn't want to take the food at all.

Excellent piece, terp.


Actually full credit should go to The Washington Post (or it's sources) for this one.
Reason for Karma (Optional)
Successfully updated karma reason!
View all recent posts
Mark all posts as read Delete cookies created by the forum Return to Top
Stardock Forums v        Server Load Time:   Page Render Time:
Facebook Twitter YouTube Google+