FDA inspects less than 2 percent of imported products
Cantaloupes infected with listeria are just the most recent event of customers being sold impure food in the U.S. Perhaps even more troubling is how little rarely imported food is actually looked over by the FDA. Federal resources are vastly insufficient to address the growing need. Article resource: Only a part of imported foods is inspected by FDA
Hard to figure out what is tainted
When delivering food from farm and retailer, there are several stops made, according to Sherri McGarry who works in the FDA as a senior advisor. She explained this delivery process right after the cantaloupe shock, as reported by the Huffington Post. It is hard to track and prevent food items from getting to a consumer.
"The food chain is very complex," said McGarry. "There are many steps, and the more steps there are, the harder it can be to link up each step to identify... the common source."
Whole world working on importing
But if following the trail of domestic products is so difficult, how much more difficult must it be when that food is imported from worldwide? As reported by the FDA, 24 million shipments of food will arrive at the nation's ports in 2011. That is a massive boost from 2001. Then, it was only 6 million.
Food and Drug Administration out of loop Read more »
Tourists return and BP goes to court
Tourists are returning to the Gulf beaches a year after the British Petroleum oil leak was capped. In light of this, BP has petitioned the court to lower its damages settlement. Others, however, think reports of a tourism growth are definitely not correct. Resource for this article - Rise in gulf tourism prompts BP to ask for discount by Newsytype.com.
The beaches were vacant
The Gulf of Mexico depends heavily on tourism. There quite much was not any tourism last year. When British Petroleum's oil drilling rig exploded and killed 11 men in April, 2010, nobody wanted to hit the beaches anymore. The oil flowed into the ocean for three months until it was successfully capped.
Back with tourism
This year, reports claim the area is enjoying a rebound in tourism. Getaway rentals were at 100 percent occupancy on July 4th weekend. USA Today Travel reported "tourists are back digging their toes into white sand beaches and scarfing down fried shrimp at restaurants along the Gulf of Mexico."
Trying to get claim lowered
As reported by BP, this means the oil spill didn't make that much of a difference. Tourism was not affected as much as every person makes it out to seem. On Friday, BP files a request in court. It wanted the damages agreement to be lowered. The claim said that "there is no basis to assume that claimants, with very limited exceptions, will incur a future loss related to the spill." Read more »
Initial notes about SPC features and development
Self Publishing Community is built from the ground up to revolve around crowdsourcing news, help, discussion etc from self-publishers who are at the coal-face, learning the techniques and seeing developments first hand. So the key is to have enough people there to engage in meaningful, constructive discussion - tell some publishing friends, and tell them to tell their friends, and hopefully we can get to a 'critical mass' where new members seek out the resource.
Currently the site is set up reasonably bare-bones - basically, it gives discussion group functionality, allowing for users to post news or discussion topics, ask questions/requests for help, and set up polls. Beyond this 'basic' functionality I'd like to hear from users as to what else they'd like to see. Some of the possibilities for building into the site:
- Book/project showcases
- Social networking
- Job requests (eg. publishers looking for designers) and classifieds
- Perhaps even Amazon sales rank tracking linked to your user account.
Feel free to add more if you have ideas! Read more »
