After years of being criticized for its response to food-sickness outbreaks and contaminated imports, the Food and Drug Administration is stepping up efforts to convince the public and skeptical lawmakers that it is making progress in overhauling the nation's food defenses. The agency will release a report Monday that summarizes what officials call a "hugely ambitious" campaign to reshape its food inspection arm to root out safety hazards through things like sophisticated software and certifiers from the private sector."The goal is to radically redesign the process," said Dr. David Acheson, the agency's associate commissioner for foods. For imported food, for instance, that means trying to detect tainted products during the production process rather than waiting until they enter the country. "We cannot simply rely on picking the ball up at the point of entry," Dr. Acheson said.
After years of being criticized for its response to food-sickness outbreaks and contaminated imports, the Food and Drug Administration is stepping up efforts to convince the public and skeptical lawmakers that it is making progress in overhauling the nation's food defenses.
The agency will release a report Monday that summarizes what officials call a "hugely ambitious" campaign to reshape its food inspection arm to root out safety hazards through things like sophisticated software and certifiers from the private sector.
"The goal is to radically redesign the process," said Dr. David Acheson, the agency's associate commissioner for foods. For imported food, for instance, that means trying to detect tainted products during the production process rather than waiting until they enter the country.
"We cannot simply rely on picking the ball up at the point of entry," Dr. Acheson said.
LONDON (Reuters) - Mice fed junk food for nine months showed signs of developing the abnormal brain tangles strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease, a Swedish researcher said on Friday. The findings, which come from a series of published papers by a researcher at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, show how a diet rich in fat, sugar and cholesterol could increase the risk of the most common type of dementia. "On examining the brains of these mice, we found a chemical change not unlike that found in the Alzheimer brain," Susanne Akterin, a researcher at the Karolinska Institutet's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, who led the study, said in a statement. "We now suspect that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors ... can adversely affect several brain substances, which can be a contributory factor in the development of Alzheimer's."
LONDON (Reuters) - Mice fed junk food for nine months showed signs of developing the abnormal brain tangles strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease, a Swedish researcher said on Friday.
The findings, which come from a series of published papers by a researcher at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, show how a diet rich in fat, sugar and cholesterol could increase the risk of the most common type of dementia.
"On examining the brains of these mice, we found a chemical change not unlike that found in the Alzheimer brain," Susanne Akterin, a researcher at the Karolinska Institutet's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, who led the study, said in a statement.
"We now suspect that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors ... can adversely affect several brain substances, which can be a contributory factor in the development of Alzheimer's."
London-based maritime insurers began maintaining that the Malacca Strait was a "war risk" as early as early 2000, subsequent to which there's been a 10-fold increase in shipping insurance on sea-going commercial vessels.
Others are maintaining that the 'piracy' folly is being vaunted in order to usher in international military forces [ie, Nato] to police strategic shipping lanes, Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea.
The great game of hunting pirates, by M K Bhadrakumar, of Asia Times Online. [worth reading in full]
Following is a Gulf perspective, provided simply as a reflection of acute regional concerns:
Piracy in the Red Sea: Saudi points towards Israel.
Divine what you may, from the various various accounts, there is a growing regional concern that, by hook or by crook, the US/ Nato bloc is setting itself up to conquer strategic ME waterways, national sovereignty be damned. .
Thoreau observed that humans are happily designed in such a way that the distance they can cover in a day's walking means that were they to spend every day hiking in a different direction from their homestead, it would take a lifetime to get to know every corner of their surroundings. There's something analogous in the distance that meat and vegetables can cover in an ox cart in the old formula of market towns gathering and redistributing the produce of a region. It's like concocting a meal with what you have in the kitchen, settling a craving for good economy. Any region can use a patron saint, and in England's West Country, that saint is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (aka Hugh Fearlessly Eats-It-All). One of Britain's top TV chefs, Fearnley-Whittingstall is on a near-holy mission to return to the land. He had his first success with a show called "A Cook on the Wild Side," in which he traveled around cooking up game and wild plants on his camping stove. Then he settled in Dorset and moved into growing his own food - saddleback pigs, old breeds of chicken - and reviving many old techniques for curing and preserving the food. His larder is permanently hung with sausages, salamis, hams and varieties of smoked fish.
Thoreau observed that humans are happily designed in such a way that the distance they can cover in a day's walking means that were they to spend every day hiking in a different direction from their homestead, it would take a lifetime to get to know every corner of their surroundings.
There's something analogous in the distance that meat and vegetables can cover in an ox cart in the old formula of market towns gathering and redistributing the produce of a region. It's like concocting a meal with what you have in the kitchen, settling a craving for good economy.
Any region can use a patron saint, and in England's West Country, that saint is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (aka Hugh Fearlessly Eats-It-All). One of Britain's top TV chefs, Fearnley-Whittingstall is on a near-holy mission to return to the land. He had his first success with a show called "A Cook on the Wild Side," in which he traveled around cooking up game and wild plants on his camping stove.
Then he settled in Dorset and moved into growing his own food - saddleback pigs, old breeds of chicken - and reviving many old techniques for curing and preserving the food. His larder is permanently hung with sausages, salamis, hams and varieties of smoked fish.
I don't expect he does much actual growing himself, because that would distract from being on TV.
Organic restaurants where only diners come from afar - International Herald Tribune
It's as if the industrial era has been neatly leapfrogged.
Quite.
