Tag Archives: food

Business/Economics, Idaho, U.S.

Pale Green Horse & Government Incompetence: Idaho inspectors tip off schools before “surprise” food safety inspections. Do you know what your kids are being fed? Idaho health districts not on the same page when it comes to inspections.

I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him.  They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

Lincoln Elementary School, in Twin Falls, Idaho, has several complaints about food safety violations, however, state health officials actually tipped off school officials before their so called “unannounced” inspection.  As a result, no violations were found.

Current Idaho regulations state that food inspections must be “unannounced”, yet health inspectors for Idaho’s South Central Public Health District violated their own rules, warning Lincoln Elementary officials of the inspection, saying it was common “courtesy”: “We want to maintain a good partnership with the schools.”-Melody Bowyer, South Central Public Health District

That’s your taxpayer dollars at work!  The whole idea of surprise inspections is to catch the food service off guard, to see how they really operate on a day to day bases. It’s even more important when you get several complaints from the taxpaying public!

But Idahoans should be concerned even more, because even with the “courtesy” warnings of inspections dozens of schools have failed inspections (according to a Times-News report)!

Another problem is school officials. Take Wendell School District, they hired a new food service director a month ago, but when asked by local media she revealed that she was not aware that the school had food safety violations in the recent past.  She’s not concerned because: “Schools have to hold themselves to a higher standard. In my experience, that’s what I’ve seen and that’s what we’re going to do in Wendell.”-Michelle Shady

Parents don’t know who they can trust: “Knowing the schools are clean is important, it would be foolish to say otherwise, but I don’t know who to contact to make sure. I guess it’s one of those things you don’t talk about until a problem comes up.”-Jerry Evers, children attend Wendell High School

If you live in Idaho you can go here to find your Public Health District.  There are links to each of the seven districts in Idaho.  However, I found it hard to find the so called public food inspection reports alluded to in a Times-News article.  In fact there is no standardized presentation of each of the seven health districts’ websites.

The Times-News (covering South Central Idaho, District 5) article said food inspections are to be unannounced, yet, on the Central Idaho (District 4) website they said only one unannounced inspection per year was required.

It’s the Central Idaho District 4 website that is the most helpful, as they do make access to their food inspections easy.  You click on “Environmental Health”, then click on “Food”, then click on “Inspections”.  You then get to a page that has links to recent District 4 inspection results.  However, this is not possible on most of the other districts’ websites!!!

Southwest Idaho’s District 3 asks you to conduct a search by name or city, in order to find out inspection results.

Idaho’s Panhandle District 1 has a Quick Link titled “Restaurant Inspections” on the Environmental Health page, requiring a search by name or city.

For Districts 2 (North Central), 5 (South Central, so I wonder where the Times-News got their info), 6 (Southeastern) & 7 (Eastern) there were no links to local public food inspection reports under the “Environmental Health/Food” section.

Fukushima

Pale Green Horse & Corporate & Government Incompetence: New Japanese apartment building is radioactive, residents contaminated with Cesium!

I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him.  They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

In Fukushima Prefecture, a newly built apartment building has proven to be highly radioactive.  In fact, local Nihonmatsu City officials say the building emits more radiation on the inside, than on the outside!

Construction of the three story building was finished in July, 2011, almost four months after the beginning of the on going nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi.  People are already living in the apartments!

Officials found that the inside of the building, on the first floor, is emitting 1.24 microsieverts per hour of cesium.  It looks as if the foundation of the building is the source of radiation, because radiation levels decrease as you go to the upper levels.

Turns out the construction company got its foundation material from inside the 20km no go evacuation zone around the nuclear plant!  But why did Nihonmatsu City officials wait until the end of December to inspect the building for radiation, after people had moved in? Apparently no one thought about it, until children living in the building turned out to have more cesium contamination than other children in the city! Can you say incompetence?

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

Pale Green Horse & What Economic Recovery? USDA to close 259 offices, how safe will your food be now?

I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him.  They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

On January 9, 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced they will have to close 259 offices across the country.  Budget concerns overrule food safety concerns.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is trying to cut $150 million from the USDA budget. The closures will affect 46 states, and includes seven foreign offices.

“They wiped out the entire Midwest.”-Andrew Lorenz, deputy district manager for the Food Safety and Inspection Service in Minneapolis

Lorenz says the office closings in his area have effectively shut down federal food inspection in Minnesota, Montana, the Dakotas and Wyoming!

Lorenz also said this could only mean USDA employees losing their jobs (on top of the 7,000 who were forced to take early retirement last year).

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack expressed concern: “Our workload is at record highs, we have less money and fewer people and work to do and we tried to address how do you do that without interrupting service.”

However, USDA undersecretary for food safety, Elisabeth Hagen, contradicted her own boss’s statement: “There will be no reduction in inspection presence at slaughter and processing facilities and no risk for consumers. Not only do we have a statutory obligation to be in every facility, we have an unwavering commitment to food safety. We will still be on the job, in every facility, every day.”

Now how do you do that with thousands less employees?

Fukushima

Government Incompetence: Only 330 cats & dogs rescued from radiation zone in Japan, hundreds more still roaming lose!

The Japanese government announced that 330 cats and dogs have been rescued from the no entry zone around the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, just in the month of December.

The Environment Ministry, and government of Fukushima Prefecture, have conducted rescue operations for dogs and cats.  However, citizens groups have been doing their own rescuing since 11 March 2011.

Several pet rescue blogs talk about the difficulty of dealing with government bureaucracy, in trying to get into the no entry zone.  Some citizen pet rescuers broke the law by going into the highly contaminated area without government permission.

Pet shelters in Japan need financial support to help care for those pets that’ve been rescued. Many pets lost their human companions to the tsunamis. Most pet rescues took place in the tsunami hit areas, but relatively little has been done in the radiation danger zone.

For those who can help, you can check out globalanimal.org. They have contact info of several of the private rescue groups in Japan, and interesting animal rescue stories.

FOOD CRISIS: HALF MILLION LIVESTOCK STARVING TO DEATH IN JAPAN!

International, U.S.

Pale Green Horse: Dengue Fever deaths skyrocket in 2011, some areas see 89% increase, some countries launching programs on the level of ‘polio eradication campaigns’, catching it more than once can kill you

I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him.  They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

Cambodia’s Ministry of Health says at least 72 Cambodian children died from dengue fever in 2011, an increase of 89%, compared to 2010.  Total number of dengue cases in Cambodia were up 26% in 2011 (15,805 cases that were reported to government officials).

“The disease broke out in a large scale every three to five years and the year 2011 was the large scale breakout, that’s why the cases were on the rise and the deaths were almost double.”-Ngan Chantha, Cambodia’s Ministry of Health

Cambodia spent U.S.$7 million fighting dengue in 2011.

Pakistan was hit hard by dengue in 2011 (never mind attacks from the Pakistani Taliban and the ungrateful government of the United States!).  By October 2011, more than 6,000 Pakistanis got sick, and at least 253 died.

The cold winter is not having any affect on the mosquitoes in Pakistan.  Contrary to the hopes of officials, two people died on December 31, after being bit by mosquitoes in freezing temperatures.

Pakistan’s Health Secretary, Mohammad Jehanzeb Khan, has ordered a mosquito spraying offensive, that must be completed before February 10, 2012.

One Pakistani doctor said they are launching an anti-dengue campaign “on the pattern of the polio campaign”.  Health officials will go door to door explaining to people how to prevent dengue by fighting mosquitoes.  They also hope to have a computer system in place that will let hospitals and clinics share information about incoming dengue cases.

In Borneo, officials are so concerned about dengue for 2012 that dengue awareness and prevention classes are now part of grade school education.

In Sri Lanka, officials reported a jump in dengue cases in December 2011;  290 cases in December, 170 in November.  One official said it doesn’t take much water for the dengue carrying mosquitoes to breed: “…this mosquito can breed in one teaspoonful of water!”-Pradeep Kariyawasam, Chief Medical Officer of the Colombo Municipal Council

On the island of Fiji (east of New Zealand), officials are now concerned about the general public, because of an outbreak of dengue in their prisons: “The symptoms of dengue fever are similar to those of normal flu but with joint pains and high fever. But people should not stay home and instead seek immediate medical attention.”-Peni Namotu, Fiji Health Ministry

Closer to the United States, Mexico reported great advances in their fight against dengue, which included testing of vaccines.  In several Mexican states, cases of dengue had dropped by as much as 80%, compared to 2010.

But fighting dengue is not that easy. In December, the University of California at Berkeley released the results of their study, which showed that surviving an initial case of dengue fever does not mean your body can survive a second infection.

The problem is that there are four major types of dengue viruses, and your body’s immune system might be lulled into a false sense of security: “With the second infection, the antibodies sort of recognize the new type of viruses, but not well enough to clear them from the system.  Instead of neutralizing the viruses, the antibodies bind to them in a way that actually helps them invade the immune system’s other cells and spread.”-Molly OhAinle, UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health.

The results of the study were published in the December 21 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

Check my other postings about dengue fever.

 

 

 

 

 

International

Pale Green Horse: Philippines hit with Rat Fever

I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him.  They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

In the Philippines, at least five people are dead and as many as 200 sick with leptospirosis.  The cases have sprung up in the southern city of Cagayan de Oro, which has suffered flooding caused by typhoon Washi.

Leptospirosis causes high fever, internal bleeding and organ failure.  It’s spread by rodents.

More than 1,200 Filipinos have been killed by typhoon Washi.

International, Opinion, U.S.

World War 3 & One World Government: 12 Warning signs from Argentine Political Analyst

The following warning signs came from Adrian Salbuchi, a political analyst in Argentina.

1) Financial Meltdown. Since 2008, the Global Financial System continues on life-support. Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner and the US economic hit team – Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup, JPMorganChase mega-bankers working with the Bank of England and the European Central Bank – have not and will not take any measures to help the populace and ailing economies.  They just funnel trillions to the banking elite, imposing the media myth that certain banks are “too big to fail” (Orwellian Newspeak for “too damn powerful to fail”). Why? Because it’s not governments overseeing, supervising and controlling Goldman Sachs, CitiCorp, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, JPMorganChase, but exactly the other way around…

2) Economic Crises.  Today, “Destructive Extreme Capitalism” [like Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital] is collapsing national and regional economies, reformatting them into international slave-labour Gulag-like entities that Joseph Stalin would envy.   Our woes lie not with the world’s real economy (mostly intact), but with the fake world of finance, banks, and speculation;

3) Social Upheavals.  Meltdowns in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Iceland and – soon to come – Italy, Spain and others, trigger violent social uprisings, even in the US and UK;

4) Pandemics.  Get ready for more “flu surprises” leading to mandatory vaccinations: a discreet opportunity to slip RFID chips into our bodies and test “intelligent viruses” targeting specific DNA strains.  Racially and ethnically selective viruses as part of mass depopulation campaigns?

5) Global Warming. As the global economy sinks into zero growth mode, economic drivers shift from growth expansion to consumption contraction. Will coming “carbon credits” open the path to full societal control?

6) Terrorist “False Flag” Mega-Attacks. The Elite have this wildcard up their sleeve to jump-start new “crises” as short-cuts towards world government.  Will new “attacks” dwarfing 9/11 justify further global wars, invasions and genocide?  A nuclear weapon over a major city to be blamed on the Elite’s “enemies”?

7) Generalized War in the Middle East. As we speak, naval forces, bombers, entire armies are poised to attack and invade Syria, Iran…

8) Ecological/Environmental “Accidents”. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident sparked the beginning of the end of the former USSR by showing the world and the Soviets themselves that their State could no longer manage their own nuclear facilities.  April 2010 saw the BP “Deepwater Horizon” oil rig eco-catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico; since March 2011, Japan and the world have been grappling with a much larger nuclear accident in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex.  Was foul play involved?

9) Assassination of a major political or religious figure to be blamed on an Elite enemy.  Mossad, CIA, MI6 are really good at playing this type of dirty trick;

10) Attacks on “Rogue States” – Iraq, Libya… Who’s next? Iran? Syria?  Venezuela?  North Korea?

11) Staged “Religious” Event. The growing need of the masses for meaning in their lives makes them easy victims of a Hollywood-staged, 3D virtual reality hologram show, orchestrating a “second coming”.  An electronically engineered “messianic figure” acting in sync with Elite global objectives?   Who would dare go against God himself?

12) Staged “Alien Contact.” This too may be in the works.  For decades, large sectors of world population have been programmed to believe in aliens.  Here too, hologram technology could stage a “space vehicle landing” – on the White House lawn, of course – highlighting the “need” for Mankind to have “unified representation” in the face of extraterrestrials.  Further justification for world government?

Business/Economics, Idaho, U.S.

Some Hope for 2012: East Idaho finally gets its first two Carl’s Jr! Part of 51 store expansion!!!

December 31, 2011, and I just ate at the first Carl’s Jr burger joint in eastern Idaho! Love those Western Bacon Cheeseburgers (been eating them since the early 1980s!), and those luscious teriyaki burgers!

No more finding excuses to travel more than an hour to get Carl’s Jr.  Although I still have to drive 45 minutes to Idaho Falls, but pretty soon, I hope, there’s gonna be Carl’s Jr in the Pocatello area.  That’s according to a 2008 press release.

carl's jr

New Carl's Jr Resturant, Grand Teton Mall, Idaho Falls

One of the new east Idaho Carl’s Jr is located in the Grand Teton Mall parking lot, across from the Barnes & Noble.

There is a second Carl’s Jr in Idaho Falls, located at the intersection of Holmes and Northgate mile. I think they were a little overwhelmed; they were out of large size cups, and they just ran out of five dollar bills on the day I tried them out.

According to a 2008 press release eastern and southeastern Idaho will get five more Carl’s Jr by 2014.  The new restaurants will be spread from Pocatello to Idaho Falls.

carl's jr

Carl's Jr, Idaho Falls, Idaho

The new restaurants are part of a huge expansion by California based Carl’s Jr.  In December, 2008, Carl Karcher Enterprises announced they signed franchise deals for 51 new stores!  Those new stores will be concentrated in Nevada and Idaho.

East and southeast Idaho will get a total of six restaurants, southern Idaho (Twin Falls area) will get three, and the Boise area (southwest Idaho) will get three more on top of the stores already there.

I noticed east Idaho’s local media paid no head to the new Carl’s Jr, but was all over the new Chick-fil-A (I’ve eaten at a Chick-fil-A in Georgia, never again).

Mmmm, how many Chick-fil-A stores will open in east Idaho, oh just the one in Ammon? (I checked Chick-fil-A’s list of future store openings) Lets see, Carl’s Jr opening a total of six stores in east and southeast Idaho (as well as new stores in south and southwest Idaho), I can see who’s gonna be helping the local economy more.

(By the way you can print off coupons from the Carl’s Jr website)

Fukushima

Global Food Crisis: 80% of damaged Japanese farmland unusable in 2012!

The Japanese government announced that it hopes to restore farmland damaged by salt contamination, caused by the March tsunamis.  However, only 20% will be restored in 2012, leaving 80% unusable.

Most of that farmland is in Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures.  Those prefectures make up one of the largest agricultural areas of Japan.  About 20,500 hectares (50,656 acres) were destroyed by the sea salt.

The Agriculture Ministry says it will take at least three years to restore the farmland, and that does not count the land in highly radioactive areas around the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

It’s interesting that the earthquake, tsunamis and ongoing nuclear disaster hit one of Japan’s biggest areas for agriculture and fishing.

 

Fukushima

Global Food Crisis and Government & Corporate Incompetence: Fish catch down 70% off the coast of Fukushima, U.S. FDA misleads!

Fish catches, off the coast lines of Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures, is down 70%.  That’s from the beginning of April 2011 to the beginning of October 2011, compared to the same time last year.

Those three prefectures are the main fishing grounds for the local Japanese fishing industry.

The reasons are a combination of tsunami damage to ports (especially Miyagi, which was literally wiped out), and radiation contamination caused by Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.  Most fishermen had voluntarily stopped fishing over radiation concerns, but some continued to fish, only to find out a lot of their catch was contaminated after it arrived at fish markets.

Contrary to the reassuring statements on the U.S. FDA website, there is no standardized Japanese government testing of fish (or any food product) for radiation contamination. Most contamination was (and still is being) found by private citizens groups, or local governments who acted on their own volition.