HUNDREDS of tons of British food aid shipped to America for starving Hurricane Katrina survivors is to be burned. ... tons of the badly needed Nato ration packs, the same as those eaten by British troops in Iraq, has been condemned as unfit for human consumption. | Exactly why are they badly needed? While the people in the Superdome right after the storm could have used them, I don't see anyone starving to death now. |
Scores of lorries headed back to a warehouse in Little Rock, Arkansas, to dump it at an FDA incineration plant. The Ministry of Defence in London said last night that 400,000 operational ration packs had been shipped to the US. "It is perfectly good Nato approved food of the type British servicemen have. Yet the FDA are saying that because there is a meat content and it has come from Britain it must be destroyed... It's because of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy; aka Mad Cow Disease. Suspected of causing Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans. That's why I can't give blood anymore: You should indefinitely defer former or current U.S. military personnel, civilian military personnel, and their dependents as follows:
individuals who resided at U.S. military bases in Northern Europe (Germany, United Kingdom, Belgium, and the Netherlands) for 6 months or more, from 1980 through 1990 or,
individuals who resided at U.S. military bases elsewhere in Europe (Greece, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, and Italy) for 6 months or more, from 1980 through 1996. |
Food from Spain and Italy is also being held because it fails to meet US standards and has been judged unfit for human consumption. And Israeli relief agencies are furious that thousands of gallons of pear juice are to be destroyed because it has been judged unfit.
| And now, the rest of the story: |
The Ministry of Defence said: "We understand there was a glitch and these packs have been impounded by the US Department of Agriculture under regulations relating to the import and export of meat. "The situation is changing all the time and at our last meeting on Friday we were told progress was being made in relation to the release of these packs. The Americans certainly haven't indicated to us that there are any more problems and they haven't asked us to take them back."
The FDA said: "We did inspect some MREs (meals ready to eat) on September 13. They are the only MREs we looked at. There were 70 huge pallets of vegetarian MREs. "They were from a foreign nation. We inspected them and then released them for distribution." | Guess there isn't going to be any bonfires of burning MREs. The real facts were buried at the bottom of story where the reporter and poster hoped you'd overlook them. |
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