"bird flu" news and stories

In an effort to combat bird flu China announced this week that it wants to eventually phase out live poultry markets.

The country's State Council seeks to ban new markets, according to Chinadaily.The Council is also calling for existing poultry markets to be moved from highly populated areas. It also called upon local governments to ensure that sanitation standards were being followed.

While live poultry markets are popular throughout Asia, they are widely recognized as having the potential to spread avian flu. According to the official Xinhua news agency, China has had to eliminate 47,000 birds during 10 outbreaks over the course of this year. Since the end of 2003, 21 people have caught the disease and 14 have died.

Source

Remember when the news broke out that kimchee, the stinky, spicy, fermented cabbage from Korea, might aid in fighting the bird flu? I bet half the people who read the news went out and bought a giant jar of the stuff. But unless you're Korean and you eat kimchee with every meal (even breakfast!), you probably still have more than half of that jar left, slowly ripening away in the back of your fridge. Before long, it'll be kimchee wine, which sounds absolutely...gross.

Fret not, kimchee freaks. Rachael, of the food blog Fresh Approach Cooking, has taken kimchee and made it into a pasta salad! Normally, I bristle at "fusion," but I just can't help but love any idea that incorporates one of my all time favorite foods. Fabulous!

That's right. South Korean astronauts may be taking a specially designed type of kimchi with them when they travel on a Russian spacecraft in 2008. The news comes from a recent Los Angeles Times article about kimchi's presence in the academic and scientific communities in Korea. The kimchi that the Korean astronauts will take is intended to help their digestion. Some of you may recall news about kimchi's possible ability to stave off avian flu, and the Times lists several other health claims associated with the fermented national treasure. Mice fed kimchi were apparently less stressed and had fewer wrinkles. Still, other research suggests that eating too much kimchi may be linked to increased risk of gastric cancer. According to the Times, South Koreans consume 77 pounds of kimchi annually and rates of gastric cancer are 10 times higher there than in the U.S.

[Photo: Kim Kyung-hoon / Reuters]

This week, Tyson announced that it would be donating 6 million pounds of poultry to America's Second Harvest, an organization that feeds the nation's poor and hungry. Earlier this year, a smaller company, Perdue Farms, donated a million pounds of poultry to charitable organizations. The USDA has purchased chicken off the market for $32.5 million and will be delivering it to food depositories.

Sounds charitable.

But I'm not so sure. The donations are motivated by an oversupply of chicken that has been created by a decline in the usual demand for chicken exports from the US into Asia. The decreased demand is based on people's fear of avian flu. Now obviously, there is no avian flu in this US supply of chicken, but it just seems strange to donate chicken that has been "rejected" because of avian flu to the nation's poor.

Source

Starting next month, poultry providers will have to meet a new set of packaging standards for their products. For example, the labels will clearly have to state if the product needs to be cooked. Regulators say that there is a good deal of confusion among consumers, especially over frozen, raw poultry that may already be partially prepared with a stuffing or breading, so the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has devised this label: Uncooked: For Safety, Must be Cooked to an Internal Temperature of 165 degrees F as Measured by Use of a Thermometer. The new labels will be added to all frozen poultry products.

The FSIS is in the process of approving cooking instructions that will accompany all the chicken products, with guidelines that suggest consumers use traditional food preparation methods as opposed to the microwave. "A fundamental part of label evaluation is to ensure that labeling will be understood and followed by consumers," said the FSIS.

I wonder exactly how many consumers are "fooled" into thinking that their raw chicken is already cooked. Are the artificial grill marks and colorings, not to mention breading, so convincing as to actually make people think their raw chicken was cooked before being frozen? Are people so used to buying frozen, pre-cooked meals that the concept of a non-precooked item is foreign to them? I would certainly like to think not. It is possible the the labels will help consumers be more prepared should the bird flu suddenly pop up.

 

Source