20 million chickens held because of feed
Sat, 05 May 2007 17:48:13 GMTBy DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Federal officials on Friday placed a hold on 20 million chickens raised for market in several states because their feed was mixed with pet food containing an industrial chemical.
Three government agencies — the Agriculture Department, the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency — are overseeing a risk assessment to determine whether the chickens would pose a threat to human health if eaten, USDA spokesman Keith Williams said. The assessment may be completed as early as Monday.
The 20 million chickens represent a tiny fraction of the 9 billion chickens raised each year in the United States. Meat from the birds can't go into commercial use without the USDA's inspection seal, which is being withheld until the risk assessment is completed, Williams said.
Which states have chicken producers affected by the hold will be announced later, Williams said. State agriculture officials as well as chicken manufacturers were being contacted as the agencies determine the extent of the problem, he said, adding that many farms in several states probably were involved.
Investigators found last week that about 5 percent of feed used at some smaller chicken production operations came from pet food tainted with the chemical melamine, Williams said. Larger manufacturers, because they usually use special feed for the chickens they raise or contract for raising, are unlikely to have exposed their animals to large amounts of the tainted pet products, he said.
As of Friday, no melamine had been detected in the feed used by larger manufacturers, Williams said. However, because investigators know some of the tainted pet food was used in that feed, officials still placed a hold on the birds, he said.
"Absent the risk assessment in this particular situation, USDA will not put the seal of inspection on this meat," he said.
Since March 16, more than 100 brands of pet food have been recalled because they were contaminated with melamine. An unknown number of dogs and cats have been sickened or died after eating pet food tainted with the chemical.
The Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service said Thursday that no evidence indicated any harm to humans from chicken or pork that had entered the market after having eaten melamine-contaminated feed.
Federal investigators have been trying to determine how much of the tainted pet food had been used in feed for hogs and chickens. Hog farms in at least six states may have received tainted pet food for use in feed. Those animals also have been barred from market.
The USDA and FDA said this week that chicken feed in some farms in Indiana contained byproducts from pet food manufactured with contaminated wheat gluten imported from China.
At the time, the agencies estimated that 30 broiler poultry farms and eight breeder poultry farms in Indiana had received contaminated feed in early February. More farms probably received contaminated feed, the agencies said.
Williams said Friday that the risk assessment for chickens that had eaten feed with melamine would involve four aspects:
_The absence of melamine in feed used by large commercial producers.
_The dilution of the pet food with larger amounts of other ingredients in the feed.
_The healthy state of chickens that ate the feed.
_The lack of evidence of harm to humans by trace amounts of melamine because of the varied human diet and other factors.
Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-Conn., the chairwoman of the House Appropriations' agriculture subcommittee and co-chairwoman of the Congressional Food Safety Caucus, said the link between the tainted pet food and chicken feed "highlights the egregious holes in our food safety system."
"It is time to grant the FDA and other food safety agencies clear mandatory recall and inspection authority," she said in a statement. "These initial steps would help create a modern, comprehensive food safety agency that will be capable of protecting our food supply and restoring consumer confidence."
Sen. Tom Harkin , chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said he agrees that the chickens should be held while risk to humans is assessed.
"This news proves how quickly a food safety concern can grow — it warrants great care and further proves why we need an audit of the nation's food safety system," Harkin, D-Iowa, said in a statement.
Switch to organic crops could help poor
Sat, 05 May 2007 20:51:09 GMTBy NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer
ROME - Organic food has long been considered a niche market, a luxury for wealthy consumers. But researchers told a U.N. conference Saturday that a large-scale shift to organic agriculture could help fight world hunger while improving the environment.
Crop yields initially can drop as much as 50 percent when industrialized, conventional agriculture using chemical fertilizers and pesticides is converted to organic. While such decreases often even out over time, the figures have kept the organic movement largely on the sidelines of discussions about feeding the hungry.
Researchers in Denmark found, however, that food security for sub-Saharan Africa would not be seriously harmed if 50 percent of agricultural land in the food exporting regions of Europe and North America were converted to organic by 2020.
While total food production would fall, the amount per crop would be much smaller than previously assumed, and the resulting rise in world food prices could be mitigated by improvements in the land and other benefits, the study found.
A similar conversion to organic farming in sub-Saharan Africa could help the region's hungry because it could reduce their need to import food, Niels Halberg, a senior scientist at the Danish Research Center for Organic Food and Farming, told the U.N. conference on "Organic Agriculture and Food Security."
Farmers who go back to traditional agricultural methods would not have to spend money on expensive chemicals and would grow more diverse and sustainable crops, the report said. In addition, if their food is certified as organic, farmers could export any surpluses at premium prices.
The researchers plugged in data on projected crop yields and commodity prices until 2020 to create models for the most optimistic and conservative outlooks.
Alexander Mueller, assistant director-general of the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, praised the report and noted that projections indicate the number of hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa was expected to grow.
Considering that the effects of climate change are expected to hurt the world's poorest, "a shift to organic agriculture could be beneficial," he said.
Nadia El-Hage Scialabba, an FAO official who organized the conference, pointed to other studies she said indicated that organic agriculture could produce enough food per capita to feed the world's current population.
One such study, by the University of Michigan, found that a global shift to organic agriculture would yield at least 2,641 kilocalories per person per day, just under the world's current production of 2,786, and as many as 4,381 kilocalories per person per day, researchers reported. A kilocalorie is one "large" calorie and is known as the "nutritionist's calorie."
"These models suggest that organic agriculture has the potential to secure a global food supply, just as conventional agriculture today, but with reduced environmental impacts," Scialabba said in a paper presented to the conference.
However, she stressed that the studies were only economic models.
The http://www.fao.org/organicag/ofs/index_en.htm
