Texas Finds Bird Flu in a Poultry Farm - Source

[rodbarnett]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A case of the bird flu virus was found in a poultry farm in Texas, the fourth U.S. state to be affected by the disease, a U.S. industry official told Reuters on Friday.

"Yes, Texas found bird flu ... in a live bird supplying farm," said the official, who did not want to be identified.

The official said the strain of the virus found was H5N2, which he said was a mild strain of the potentially deadly virus that has killed at least 22 people in Asia.

Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania have also reported mild strains of bird flu.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20040220/ts_nm/birdflu_texas_dc

[banana republican]

1. OK so what is safe to eat???

Hepititas in the onions
Mad Cows in the Beef
Bird Flu in the Chicken
Samonilla in the Eggs
Dioxins in the Fish
aaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh

[LeftHander]

2. bananas....

eom

[Whoa_Nelly]

3. Pesticides--Be sure to wash bananas, then your hands before eating

Pesticides reported in use on banana plantations

Aldicarb
Lethal for humans

Fenamiphos
Toxic to birds and fish

Methyl Parathon
Toxic by inhalation, ingestion

Terbufos
Slow thinking, memory loss

Ethoprophos
High dermal toxicity

Carbofuran
Toxic to birds and has high potential for water contamination.

Chlorpyriphos
Birth defects

Paraquat
Highly toxic

Tridemorph
May cause narcosis

Chlorothalonil
Loss of muscle contraction

http://www.soc.duke.edu/~s142tm09/GS_Pesticides.htm

Pesticides in the banana ecosystem
The ecosytem of a banana plantation is extremely wet and hot. The soil is very loose, helping the banana plants grow but also making it easy for pesticides to spread throughout the system. It often rains in these areas, flushing pesticides into the ground and water table. The banana industry's answer to this dissipation has been to apply pesticides frequently.

Ways pesticides get into the environment:
Air: Airplanes drop toxic chemicals regularly from the air. Pesticides fall on the plants, but also on workers, the ground and irrigation canals and streams.
Ground: Workers apply pesticides to the ground around the plants. These chemicals seep into the ground with every rainfall.
Water: Pesticides also get into water that is used to wash bananas in the packing plants. That water then flows back into the irrigation canals.
Bags: Plastic bags with the insecicide chlorpyrifos cover all the banana bunches from their inception. The chemical leaks off the bags in rain storms and flows into the ground and water.
Black Sigatoka is a banana plant disease that plagues most areas where Chiquita bananas are produced. The airborne fungus eats away at the plant leaves, turning them black. The disease shrinks the size of the fruit and makes it ripen too quickly to be shipped to market. Eventually, the disease kills the plant. Some researchers now are trying to find a Sigatoka resistant banana that will still appeal to consumers, but nothing has been discovered thus far. To date, the industry's reaction to the problem has been to increase aerial spraying of powerful pesticides.

http://bananas.xs4all.be/CSR_16.htm#Pesticides in the banana ecosystem


...and what has Chiquita done about this problem?

<snip>
Our Performance
a. Chiquita's Pesticide Policy - Summary
In any agricultural production, the control of pests is important to both productivity and quality. As described below, we use several types of pesticides in the production of safe, high quality bananas:

Fungicides control Black Sigatoka, an airborne fungus that attacks the leaves of banana plants, and post-harvest fungicides protect the fruit from rots and molds that may develop during transport to market.
Herbicides control weeds that compete for plant nutrients.
Insecticides infused into plastic bags help control insect damage to developing fruit.
Nematicides control nematodes (microscopic worms) that destroy the roots of banana plants.

Chiquita uses only pesticide products that have been approved for use on bananas by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the European Union regulatory authorities. We use integrated management techniques on all of our farms to control pest problems. We conduct frequent site- specific surveys of our farms to determine the levels of pest infestation and damage. In order to minimize the use of pesticides and to reduce costs, we have discontinued routine, blanket applications, and we now apply pesticides only when and where necessary. We employ a group of researchers who evaluate government-approved products, and we select those that are most effective and safest for the environment and for worker health. We also update quarterly a list of approved chemicals, and our farm managers are obliged to use only these products on Chiquita farms.

Our policy for pesticide approvals is to trade down in toxicity whenever a safer, effective alternative becomes available. The policy does not factor cost into the decision; however, our experience has been that safer alternatives have been no more expensive, and in some cases have represented significant cost savings versus more traditional products. Chiquita's pesticide policy is available at www.chiquita.com.

In order to earn renewal of its Better Banana Project certification, each farm must demonstrate to auditors its commitment to reduce the use of pesticides to the fullest extent possible.

More from Chiquita:
http://www.chiquita.com/chiquitacr1/3perform/crg19.asp

[amazona]

4. the chicken is perfectly safe to eat

If the news reports are suddenly going to provide coverage of every time avian flu and avian encephalitis is reported from a poultry farm, they're going to be awfully busy. These diseases are common occurrences and there are procedures in place to control them.

I wonder why they suddenly want to report every tiny outbreak of this flu strain, which doesn't affect people and has about zero economic significance, when they had no interest in the much more severe outbreaks that have occurred. Not too long ago, almost all of the poultry in southern California had to be depopulated because of Newcastle's Disease. I hardly saw a peep in the news.

The food hysteria is getting out of hand. And people wonder why our teens and young women starve themselves to death.