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(Reuters) - Relatives offered words of comfort to a teary-eyed woman paying her last respects as an undertaker slammed shut the door of the cremation chamber and flames engulfed the small coffin of a cherished family member. The hastily arranged prayers, cremation and scattering of ashes in Vietnam's capital was for Capi, a 13-year-old dog that died that day after a battle with diabetes. Capi's owner had called Bao Sinh Dog-Cat Resort, a one-stop shop with services rivalling anything on offer to humans. "I'm so glad this place exists. Otherwise I wouldn't know what to do with Capi's body," said...

Former Australian cattle station manager Michael Sheehy has some singular advice for the Indonesian government if it wants to achieve self-sufficiency in beef: Follow the model of the booming palm oil industry and put cattle raising in corporate hands. As with most of Indonesia's agriculture, the livestock industry is largely confined to low- technology operations - backyard feedlots that mean a higher cost of production and higher prices for consumers as a result. The Indonesian government has used tariffs and quotas to protect local farmers from international competition. This is a short-term measure which, judging by the current beef price...

So I am thinking of simply leaving the job I work at now and heading to a Southern state, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Northern Florida, Tennessee, etc since I figure that, since I am one of those who does not have a reliable source of family aid of any kind, that this could be my only option. I am considering finding a church that has a sort of communal living situation, a farm, ranch, factory or other such source that could use additional workers and join one of them. I am thinking of it in light of a situation...

What this means is that should Congress fail to increase the debt ceiling this week, come November there will literally be millions of people in the United States who will have exactly zero dollars transferred to their EBT cards. What will happen to the nearly 50 million people who depend on these benefits to survive? Think this past weekend and multiply it across the entirety of the United States of America. In the State of Utah the immediate effect of the USDA’s contingency plan will be a freeze in benefits for 100,000 people. Richard Phillips, a homeless man who depends...

If you ever wondered why we recommend prepping, and stockpiling food and emergency supplies, one look at what happened this weekend Springhill and Mansfield, LA should tell you everything you need to know – and will give you a glimpse at what this country will look like during a nationwide crisis. Over the weekend, the debit system that allows people on government assistance to buy food, temporarily went down. The resulting chaos is a small glimpse at what I believe will happen, should the government plunge this country into some sort of economic collapse. A couple of Walmarts in Louisiana...

Katelyn Fossett / Foreign PolicyYou may not have heard of Gennady Onishchenko, but if his own accounts are to be believed, he’s the Russian government official who single-handedly averts major public health crises posed by foreign countries’ dangerously lax and unsophisticated food safety standards (including those in a certain country where the federal government has ground to a halt). To others, Onishchenko, Russia’s chief sanitary inspector, is also Russia’s chief manufacturer of elaborate food safety scares to wage geopolitically motivated trade wars with other countries, particularly former Soviet republics. On Wednesday, Onishchenko, the director of Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s consumer-protection agency, announced...

The Yomiuri ShimbunThe government and ruling parties have started to consider scrapping tariffs on imported wine, an idea that would, in turn, call on other negotiators in the ongoing Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks to eliminate tariffs on sake, government sources said. The move suggests that the government and ruling parties believe the mutual removal of tariffs would greatly benefit domestic consumers while also increasing sake exports from Japan, according to the sources. The idea to eliminate tariffs on wine was a Japanese response to a request made by Australia and New Zealand, the sources said. The government and the...

In a harbor fish market in Jung District, Incheon, lights along the fish stalls were shining to attract customers Friday evening. In contrast to the mood created by the bright lights, there were hardly more than a dozen customers. “Just a few months ago, we had to keep the stall open well past midnight to accommodate,” says Jung Gyung-suk, a 57-year-old fishmonger who has run a stall for almost three decades. “All day long, I have had only three groups of customers, about 10 people,” said the somber-looking restaurant owner as she shuttered her stall at about 10 p.m. Jung...

Authorities in Moscow are on high alert in the city's downtown core, following mass demonstrations there on Sunday. Over 200 people have been arrested after rioting broke out south of the Kremlin complex. Earlier in the day on Sunday, angry demonstrators stormed a vegetable market in the area, searching for the person they believe is responsible for a murder. When police showed up to try to restore order, demonstrators eventually turned on police. Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev is vowing to restore order. "Literally tomorrow, activate the work in relation to all of the vegetable warehouses, which are a constant...

An Edinburg man filed a lawsuit against Georgia Nut Company and Dollar General after he lost his tooth while allegedly eating Sweet Smiles chocolate covered almonds. The civil lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court by Jesus Castaneda The lawsuit alleges that Castaneda had the intent of consuming the chocolate covered almonds, and when he was biting down on one, he felt a sharp pain to the left side of his mouth. He then went to a dentist, where he found out his tooth was fractured and non-restorable, the lawsuit alleges. According to the lawsuit, the product was defective, unreasonably...

(Reuters) - First it was sex, then casinos. Now, a Singapore diplomat has been charged with inflating the number of pineapple tarts and bottles of wine carried on official visits in the latest corruption case to hit the squeaky clean city-state. Lim Cheng Hoe, former chief of protocol at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, allegedly overbilled authorities by around S$89,000 ($71,100) by overstating the amount of gifts bought for official purposes between 2008 and 2012. Lim faces 60 charges and could be jailed for up to three years on each charge if found guilty. Singapore, a wealthy Asian finance and...

The country's transport minister is expected to formally agree the barter deal with Chinese premier Li Keqiang on Friday, according to the Nation. The project to link Bangkok with Nong Khai, close to the Laos border, is part of a proposed 2m baht ($30bn, £19bn) infrastructure investment programme to part-financed with agricultural products. The railway is one day envisaged to link Thailand with the Southern Chinese province of Kunming, via the Laos capital Vientiane. However, fine details remain to be thrashed out between the countries. The Bangkok Post says even the transport minister isn't optimistic of the scheme's success. It...

Authorities said on Wednesday that, although emissions from cooking activities can lead to air pollution, it is not the main cause for the haze blanketing many Chinese cities. The statement came after Zhao Huimin, director of Beijing's Municipal Foreign Affairs Office, said the amount of emission from cooking activities considerably raised the PM concentration in the air to 2.5. Zhao Huimin's words were soon met with harsh criticism from the internet. The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Environmental Protection says, while exhaust emission from automobiles, coal combustion and industrial dusts remain the biggest sources of PM2.5 pollution, cooking activities can add...

SEOUL/CHICAGO Oct 9 (Reuters) - South Korea has suspended some U.S. beef imports after detecting the cattle feed additive zilpaterol in meat supplied by a unit of JBS USA Holdings Inc , raising concerns that the controversial animal growth enhancer may still be in the supply chain weeks after Merck & Co halted sales of Zilmax, the top-selling zilpaterol-based drug. The South Korean claim of zilpaterol-tainted beef is the first to come to light since Merck suspended sales of Zilmax on Aug. 16 amidst concerns about its impact on the health of cattle. It also comes at a time when...

The problem is not made any better by so called experts in the field, who fuel the myth that they are feeding themselves in the wilderness. I vividly remember watching Andrew Price, host of A-Z of Bushcraft in one of the episodes, waking up in the morning, walking a few feet next to camp, gathering a few berries, and then turning the the camera and saying “breakfast is served”. Ray Mears, aside from his excellent series, Wild Foods, has numerous instances where he gathers meager resources and then implies that his food requirement have been met. Of course, none of...

Last week, the Tea Party Immigration Coalition announced a boycott of several national restaurant chains, including McDonald's after they, along with more than 100 companies signed a letter asking the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a so-called 'comprehensive immigration reform' bill this year. Thus granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, as well as increasing the number of foreign workers coming to this country legally. Such a measure would undoubtedly displace more American workers, at a time when only 47 percent of Americans have a full time job. On Thursday, the TPIC sent a message to McDonald's explaining the...

The head of Barilla pasta says he won’t run advertisements featuring gay couples, citing his belief that children deserve a mother and father: Guido Barilla, whose firm has almost half the Italian pasta market and a quarter of that in the US, told Italy’s La Zanzara radio show last night: “I would never do an advert with a homosexual family…if the gays don’t like it they can go an eat another brand.“For us the concept of the sacred family remains one of the fundamental values of the company.”He added: “Everyone has the right to do what they want without disturbing...

...Most of us think in terms of Nature vs. Nurture. We have genetic traits that give us something to work with, and the environment we live in shapes us. Scott Jurek adds a dimension: he’s an agent in his own life. His will is equal to or greater than the other forces, and the success he’s achieved, the records he’s set, the boundaries he’s pushed, have been all him. - See more at: http://www.claytonlindemuth.com/2013/09/21/eat-and-run-book-review/#sthash.CxJOT43m.dpuf

This is not the headline you see this weekend. More typical is “House Republicans pass deep cuts in food stamps” like the New York Times. It is not until deep in the article you realize the “deep” cuts of 40 Million are over 10 years. That’s for a program that will still spend $700 Billion with a “B” after the deep cuts. Two other provisions included with the trimming are to drug test recipients if they want our generosity and preventing lottery winners from receiving food stamps.

A Japanese vessel was arrested for allegedly fishing illegally in South African waters, authorities confirmed on Friday. The Japanese-registered long-line vessel Koei Maru No. 88 had been arrested for a variety of alleged transgressions near the Aliwal Shoal Marine Protected Area off Durban in Eastern South Africa, according to the Department of Fisheries in Cape Town. The ship's owner had paid 2 million rands (about 200,000 U.S. dollars) as "security" for the release of the vessel, department officials said. Officials were investigating a variety of marine-related transgressions and court proceedings would follow, according to the Durban-based Mercury newspaper. The vessel...

September 11, 2013Florida Man, 51, Arrested For Chicken Wing Assault On Wife Meet Patrick Arthur.The Florida man, 51, was arrested last night for battering his wife with a bowl of chicken wings, police report.Cops were summoned to the Myakka City home Arthur shares with his wife Darlene. The couple, who have been married three years, had been fighting, Darlene’s daughter told a 911 operator.After a Manatee County Sheriff’s Office deputy arrived at the Wingate Road residence, Patrick--who appeared to be enjoying a glass of wine--explained that he was “tired of the marriage and all the fighting so he tried to...

Around one in 10 families in South Korea are unable to afford traditional gifts for the country's forthcoming Chuseok (harvest festival) holiday, it has been reported. A poll of more than 1,200 people found that 11.6% would not buy presents for the annual celebration, says one of the country's largest supermarkets. Choi Choon-seok of South Korean hypermarket Lotte Mart expects "a noticeable trend toward inexpensive and practical presents" as households grapple with the continuing recession, says The Chosun Ilbo newspaper. People buying presents are likely to spend an average of 196,000 won ($180; £115) on gifts of fruit and healthy...

Unlike the Obama Administration's foreign policies, it's hearty and digestible. A bit like them, the recipe requires a crock pot slow cooker. A statement from Mrs. Chicken: "Please! Eat more beef. Or pork. Or spinach. Anything else!"Ingredients to serve four humansTwo large chicken breasts Water, to cover it all, in a slow cooker; beyond that, everything depends on one's taste. Soy Sauce, about four tablespoons Curry powder, about 2 generous tablespoons Beef stock, 4 cubes or whatever Old South West Seasoning, about two teaspoons Cream of mushroom soup, either powdered or canned Mushrooms, either fresh or from a can Celery, two...

Chinese authorities have recovered about 100 tonnes (220,000lb) of poisoned fish from a river in central Hubei province, state media report. The fish died after a chemical factory discharged ammonia into the Fuhe river, Xinhua news agency said. Environmental officials blamed a nearby local firm for the incident. This latest industrial incident comes after more than 16,000 dead pigs were recovered earlier this year from a river that runs through Shanghai. China has faced increasing pollution problems as a result of decades of fast economic growth.

Authorities in an outlying Hanoi district have set up special taskforces to hunt and catch and kill stray dogs after at least 117 people were bitten by those infected with rabies. Nguyen Thi Cam, a resident in Soc Son District’s Bac Son Commune, said a stray dog, possibly from a nearby province, wandered by her house, attacking her five-year-old granddaughter on June 29. “I chased it away with a stick. But it returned several hours later and bit three other people before running away,” she said. “It looked like a mad dog with red eyes. Its hair stood up on...

WASHINGTON – The U.S. West is on the verge of a serious horse crisis, says a new paper in Science, which argues that the wild horse population is growing so fast that the government could soon be unable to manage the herds. There are currently some 33,000 wild horses roaming freely on public lands in the western United States, descendants of horses brought by Spanish conquistadors. Under a 1971 law, the Bureau of Land Management is supposed to protect these horses and make sure their numbers don’t get out of hand so they are not destroying the ecosystem or dying...

Chocolate Tree ''All You Can Eat": A Rookie's Tale We were what the locals called "First Timers". "Pace yourself", they would say. What does that mean,"Pace yourself"? I would soon learn. The veterans to this affair were obvious. They were the ones who brought bottles of water or milk. Some even had glasses of wine. Glasses of wine! Many brought their own plates or plastic bowls. I was a rookie, and it showed. The gates opened, and the crowd that had gathered stormed the Chocolate Tree like the opening scene of "Saving Private Ryan". I grabbed a tiger paw and...

DESPITE calls for the abolition of the executive department’s “pork barrel”, President Benigno Aquino 3rd on Wednesday defended the lump sum funds under his discretion, including the Malampaya, calamity and the president’s social funds (PSF). Aquino said lump sum funds are needed to create an elbow room for emergency and unexpected situations. He said that it is difficult to itemize the lump sum funds under his discretion, especially the calamity fund. “The question is, how can you itemize the calamity funds before the calamity strikes? The department should really have a fund to be used in calamities that we cannot,...

The Korean Food Foundation (KFF), promoter of "hansik," is shedding light on food from North Korea, currently more infamous than famous because of its nuclear brinkmanship. It is publishing a 120-page book “The Hidden Taste of North Korean Food” that contains recipe of 50 meals based on document research and interviews with North Korean defectors here, the foundation said, Thursday. The primary goal of the project is to preserve authentic recipes and cooking methods for North Korean dishes. At the same time, the book will help raise international awareness of the secretive nation’s signature meals, it said. “The English-language version...

By now, you’ve definitely heard about the Burrit0bot — pretty much the most awesome 3D printer in the world. It lets you make burritos … with your iPhone. (If you hadn’t heard about this till now, go ahead and collect your brain pieces from the floor.) Burrit0bot is, very sadly, still a prototype designed by an NYU grad student named Marko Manriquez for his thesis project. Meaning that it hasn’t been made yet. So — to appease your disappointment — we decided to round up all of the grub that already can be made by robots. To follow, your futuristic...

Ten days ago, I wrote a column that mentioned fresh New Mexico green chile would soon be available at a grocery store in Washington, D.C. Some readers in Washington – and some who had friends or family in Washington – wrote me asking that I let them know when the chile arrives. Well, here’s your notice. The Harris Teeter grocery store at Jenkins Row on Capitol Hill now has a small stash of genuine Hatch green chile in hot, medium-hot and (last I checked) mild. It’s $1.29 per pound. That’s probably more than New Mexicans are used to paying, but...

“Hamburger shops are a dime a dozen in Tokyo these days, but there are very few places doing barbecue,” said Lauren Shannon, owner of Bulldog Barbeque (www.bulldogbbq.jp). By barbecue, Shannon doesn’t mean any old thing thrown on a grill, but rather the tradition of the American South of slow-cooked, smoked meats. If you don’t know it, you’re missing out on some seriously good, authentically American food. If you do know it, you’ve probably lamented that it is so hard to come by in Tokyo. “It’s the exact opposite of fast food. It takes days of salt rubs, hours of smoking....

Chinese consumers are responding to a powerful new marketing tactic that plays to a widespread fear of food contamination - the promise of safe groceries sold online. Pledging produce direct from the farm, vendors have found food is becoming one of the fastest-growing segments of Internet retailing as they cash in on scares from cadmium-tainted rice to recycled cooking oil. The trend is adding momentum to a Chinese online retail boom driven by a rapidly expanding middle class, with companies such as COFCO Ltd and Shunfeng Express betting that a decent slice of a 1.3 billion population will pay for...

For the second time in less than a year, Minnesota authorities are prosecuting Alvin Schlangen for unauthorized delivery of farm produce. Schlangen offers members of the private buying club, Freedom Farms Co-op, the benefit of his volunteer delivery service. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) demands that the Stearns County District Attorney stop the deliveries by bringing charges against Schlagen. Schlagen's customers, many of whom have no other convenient means of getting food to their homes, are irate at the MDA. “A lot of those on Schlagen's route are house-bound or handicapped,” said Elisabeth Berry. “More to the point, though,...

First published on FrontPage Magazine. By Enza Ferreri “Beware! Halal food funds terrorists.” Stickers with this slogan were sold in July by a candidate of the Australian political party One Nation, and condemned by the country’s Multicultural Affairs Minister Glen Elmes as “offensive, grotesque and designed to inflame hatred.” He added: “People are encouraged to put the stickers on food products in supermarkets, which isn’t just racial discrimination, it’s also vandalism.” What the sticker says, though, is apparently taking place in the USA and Canada where Campbell’s Soup and other companies have paid the Hamas-linked Islamic Society of North...

I know the restaurant biz very well, I can give you a very good prediction on what would happen if employees at McDonalds must be paid $15 an hour; The first thing that will happen is all the low skilled, non management people will be fired and replaced by line cooks with 3 plus years experience and newly graduated culinary students. If an owner has too pay twice the regular wage, he is only going to hire much more experienced people for obvious reasons. One of the highest costs in the restaurant business is training employees, especially fast food, most...

HO CHI MINH CITY (Reuters) - Tycoon Henry Nguyen mopped floors, flipped burgers and even cleaned toilets over a 10-year campaign to convince McDonald's Corp to let him bring Big Macs and Happy Meals to communist Vietnam. McDonald's is making a late entry into this market, where Yum Brands Inc already has dozens of Pizza Hut and KFC outlets and Burger King Worldwide Inc has 15 restaurants. Even Starbucks Corp debuted in Ho Chi Minh City in February and opened its second branch last week. Capitalism has taken root in a country that many Americans associate more with an unpopular...

Foreign brands of baby milk formula are hugely sought after Continue reading the main story Related Stories Recall over NZ dairy botulism fears China's Yili in baby milk recall China 'tainted milk' kills three China has banned all imports of milk powder from New Zealand, after its main dairy exporter, Fonterra, found in some of its products a strain of bacteria that can cause botulism. China relies on New Zealand for almost all its imports of milk powder. Imports are highly prized in China after a tainted milk formula scandal in 2008 killed six babies and made some 300,000 infants...

There are two topics that you don’t discuss in Singapore: the weather and politics, because both generally remain the same. Food, on the other hand, is a subject that unifies the people of this small island like nothing else can. Eating out here can range from horrifically expensive - S$300 for a steak if you go to a celebrity chef restaurant - to terrific value, such as S$3 for a bowl of delicious noodles, eaten out of a plastic bowl while sitting under strip lighting. Yet it is the traditional and inexpensive food sold at hawker centres that sparks an...

First, Michelle Obama called for healthier school lunches -- and kids complained that the first lady's menus left them hungry. Now, the United States Department of Agriculture has green-lighted a pilot program to serve trendy Greek yogurt in school cafeterias in New York, Idaho, Arizona, and Tennessee. If all goes well this fall, Greek yogurt may became a staple in Washington's $11 billion school lunch program in some 100,000 schools. In one sense, it's an example of America's growing European Union-style nanny state -- not to mention crony capitalism and insider influence. Two of the biggest cheerleaders of Greek yogurt...

Congress is considering a major farm bill, S. 954, along with a House companion bill. The bill would eliminate $5 billion a year in direct subsidies from corn, wheat, and other crops while expanding crop insurance. The Senate bill would cut $400 million a year in food stamps and the House would cut $2 billion a year. The legislation would also maintain limits on sugar sales and imports. 80% of the farm bill is about food stamps. There has been mention of proceeding without foodstamps in the farm bill, but Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, has...

“I can fight the bugs, I can fight the lack of rain, but when the guy comes with a clipboard what are you going to do?”, asks farmer who’s shutting down his business, thanks to the Obama FDA: Bessemer called it quits out of frustration with pending federal food safety regulations that likely will require farmers to very specifically track their produce and how it is handled from seed to sale, among other things. The new rules are part of the Food Safety Modernization Act, sweeping changes within the Food and Drug Administration aimed at making our food system safer...

Increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) have helped boost green foliage across the world’s arid regions over the past 30 years through a process called CO2 fertilisation, according to CSIRO research. In findings based on satellite observations, CSIRO, in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU), found that this CO2 fertilisation correlated with an 11 per cent increase in foliage cover from 1982-2010 across parts of the arid areas studied in Australia, North America, the Middle East and Africa, according to CSIRO research scientist, Dr Randall Donohue. “In Australia, our native vegetation is superbly adapted to surviving in arid environments...

We have seen this before. The liberals decide someone has committed a violation of political correctness and assassinate their victim. It makes no difference how long ago the violation occurred or how trivial it was; the social death sentence must be carried out by the Liberal lynch mob – period. Watching TV cooking show star Paula Deen’s self-flagellation to try to “purify” herself of the sin of using the dreaded N word some twenty seven years ago is a sad and sickening spectacle. That she committed this “unpardonable” sin so long ago has been brought out by discovery in a...

slaw dogs.

What do you plan on eating today? Burgers, Fries, Hot Dogs? Some of us even douse it all with chilli. Oh, and what will you wash it all down with? Here is one to start it off... Beef burger with sweet potato chilli chips Heat oven to 220C/200C fan/gas 7. Toss the chips with the oil, 1 tsp chilli flakes and some seasoning. Arrange in a single layer on a large baking tray and cook for about 30 mins, turning halfway through. Put the mince, remaining chilli flakes, onion, Parmesan, tomato ketchup and lots of black pepper in a large...

Wall-E-Like Farming Robots Could Replace Undocumented Workers and Save the US Billions Despite advancements in mechanization within US agriculture, some menial jobs are still best left to human workers. Problem is, federal crackdowns on undocumented laborers have decimated that workforce. The Harvester automaton could provide a cheap, readily available labor force without the threat of raids by the INS. The US agriculture industry is worth about $300 billion annually—half from livestock production, the other half from crops. However, some of the most basic jobs in this industry still have to be performed by people. Jobs like offloading potted plants from...

So, my wife and I were in a restaurant this evening, enjoying a cup of coffee. In walks this woman with her dog on a leash. The dog is running around and goes up to a lady who had her young daughter with her. The lady asked the dog owner to keep the dog away from her little girl, who is allergic to dogs. The dog owner ignores her. One of the employees tells the dog owner that animals aren't allowed in the restaurant because of Health Department regulations. The dog owner tells the employee that the dog is a...

There seems to be a full court press on Paula Deen for her either joking or indiscriminate use of the N Word, which is only allowable within the domain of African Americans. Call it ethnic immunity or racial privilege, the N Word may be used both as a pejorative and/or an expression of affection within the black community. "Look what we can do, but you whitey's can't.." Its as if there is a bounty poster over the head of non-blacks which is titled "WANTED: ANYONE WHO IS NON BLACK CAUGHT USING THE N WORD."  The reward for these merciless...

The American Medical Association has officially classified obesity as a disease. With this edict, the Obamacare facilitating AMA opens the door for publicly financed mandatory treatment programs, because prevention initiatives have failed. For the full weight of the U.S. Government to be effective in solving this new health crisis, old Uncle Sam will need to bulk up. So, who's the biggest loser in the administrations War on Liberty? We are.