Monthly Archives: November 2010

Senate passes Food Safety Bill

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I’ve received several e-mails today regarding the Senate’s passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act. Printed below is Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s press release on the matter.

Washington, D.C. – Today U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, cosponsor and one of the leading voices in support of the Food Safety Modernization Act, announced the passage of this bipartisan legislation in the Senate.  The bill will strengthen the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) authority to ensure a safer food supply and help prevent any contaminated food from reaching consumers. 

The legislation includes a provision authored by Klobuchar that will improve food safety surveillance and is modeled after the success of the Minnesota Department of Health, Minnesota Department of Agriculture, and the University of Minnesota.  The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 73 to 25, and it will now be sent to the House of Representatives for final passage. 

“The first responsibility of government is to protect its citizens,” Klobuchar said. “Ensuring a rapid response to outbreaks of contaminated food is critical to maintaining public trust in our food supply.  This bill will make necessary changes to help keep consumers safe, and I look forward to passage in the House and the bill being signed into law.”

The Food Safety Modernization Act will overhaul our food safety system and strengthen our capacity to detect and respond to foodborne illness outbreaks.  The bill will increase FDA inspections at all food facilities and will give the FDA the authority to order a mandatory recall of contaminated food products.

Klobuchar has led the effort to reform the nation’s food safety system, and this bill includes a bipartisan provision, introduced by Klobuchar and Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), which will improve federal, state, and local officials’ ability to investigate outbreaks.  The provision will promote a more rapid and effective national response to outbreaks of foodborne sickness.

The legislation has received support from numerous food industries in Minnesota as well as the Consumer Federation of America, the American Feed Industry Association, the American Spice Trade Association, the American Frozen Food Institute, the Food Marketing Institute, the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The new addition

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Sunday was an eventful day for the Buntjer family. It began with the baptism of my great-niece Kiera Rose and ended with the birth of my great-nephew Brody Alan.

Needless to say, my little digital camera has had quite the work-out in the past two days.

Two babies, born three months to the day apart (my mom, the great-grandmother, thinks that will be easy to remember – the 28s), are absolutely perfect with 10 little fingers and 10 tiny toes, lots of hair and wails loud enough to wake the parents in the middle of the night.

When I think about all of the changes that have taken place in the past year, I get a little melancholy. Everything has happened so fast.

Why, it seems like just last Christmas Matthew (Brody’s dad) and Crystal (Kiera’s mom) were sharing the microphone in front of the family Christmas tree, seeing who could sing “Jesus Loves Me” the loudest. (I think Crystal won – Matthew’s voice was hoarse after a full day of Christmas with the family.)

Now, in another three or four years, that scene may be replayed between Brody and Kiera. The aunts and uncles will think it’s cute, snap pictures and record video as they should, and I’ll probably still be sitting on the sofa, wondering where the time went.

I’ll be wondering if some of the events in my life had been different, would I be the proud mother or the beaming grandmother. It seems impossible to imagine.

The paths we take in life aren’t always up to us. I don’t know if I’ve just realized this, or finally accepted it. An honest answer would be that I’m still searching for my path.

And with that, this blog has evolved into something I hadn’t intended.

Gobble Gobble

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Happy Thanksgiving to all my Farm Bleat readers. I hope you all made it safely to your destinations. I’m not liking the glistening, ice-covered roads and sidewalks.

I’ll be gathering with a majority of my family today for the big feast, but before I head out to the farm I must first stop at the grocery store.

It seems I remembered to buy everything for the GREEN BEAN casserole except for, well, the main ingredient. Uffda!

At least Mom has everything else covered. She’s been crunching cranberries, cooking sweet potatoes and doing all that other prep work for days.

Financing the feast

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I received a couple of interesting e-mails last week about Thanksgiving. One was from Minnesota Farm Bureau, which announced that this year’s classic Thanksgiving dinner is going to cost consumers slightly more than it did in 2009; and the other was from one of those organizations that tells people to save the turkeys and keep them off the dinner table.

I’ll spare you the details of that last e-mail as I considered it nothing more than an attack on animal agriculture. I’ll just say they referred to turkey barns as warehouses and used descriptive adjectives to promote their anti-agriculture agenda.

So, that brings me back to my first e-mail from Farm Bureau, and here’s where I start to drool. Thankfully, Thanksgiving is just a couple of days away.

The American Farm Bureau has kept tabs on the cost of the classic Thanksgiving meal since 1986. This year, they had more than 100 volunteers in 34 states complete a survey on the costs for a menu of turkey, milk, rolls, a relish tray, fresh cranberries, pumpkin pie, whipping cream, stuffing, sweet potatoes and green peas.

They determined a feast for 10 would average $43.47 (based on information from 34 states). However, Minnesota shoppers will pay an average of $46.71 for the same meal.

The fact that a Thanksgiving dinner is more expensive in Minnesota — the nation’s top producer of turkeys — rather mystifies me.

Thankfully, Farm Bureau included a chart comparing the national price and the Minnesota price for each of the food items. Minnesota consumers not only will pay more for their bird, they’ll pay more for the milk, the rolls, the relish tray, the stuffing and the sweet potatoes. (We do, however, save a few pennies on our cranberries, pumpkin pie and green peas.)

Fifteen years ago, consumers paid an average of $29.64 for a classic Thanksgiving dinner, and in 1986, when they began conducting the survey, the average price was $28.74. The biggest increase came between 2006 and 2007, when the average price jumped from $38.10 to $42.26.

I have a feeling the cost for the Thanksgiving dinner at the Buntjer family table is going to be quite a bit higher than the “classic” Thanksgiving dinner. Mom tends to go all out with the turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy (which aren’t considered part of Farm Bureau’s classic meal), sweet potatoes, stuffing, sweet corn, maybe a green bean casserole, cranberries (probably both the real kind and the jellied cranberries from a can), pumpkin dessert and whatever else Mom or the other family members decide to contribute.

Uffda, I’m feeling stuffed just thinking about it all!

Happy Thanksgiving readers, and may you have the energy to take part in the Black Friday shopping craze. My plan is to be out with my reporter’s notebook and a camera … and maybe the checkbook, before dawn!

Oh, you make me smile

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It seems the older I get the more I wonder about the meaning of life. Perhaps more specifically, I wonder what it is I am here to accomplish.

Do you ever think about that?

Of course, I have my job – filling the minds of our readers with information, sometimes providing entertainment and – on the rare occasion – evoking a reaction. But outside of work, am I doing anything worthwhile? Mostly, I think no matter what I do, I could be – should be – doing more.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the church pew and reading through the bulletin when I came across a short paragraph about Operation Christmas Child. Oh sure, I’d heard of it before, but in all my nearly 40 years, I’d never bothered to actually volunteer to take and fill a box.

In nearly four decades, I’ve never once walked up to a giving tree at Christmas, plucked a name from its branch and filled a box full of items for a child in need.

I’ve had good intentions to do so, but when it came down to it, I always found an excuse or two.

“That’s for someone else – someone who doesn’t have a boatload of nieces and nephews to buy Christmas presents for, or someone who makes more money than I do,” I’d say to myself as I walked on by.

But this time, this year, I wasn’t going to listen to those excuses rolling through my brain. I want to put a smile on a child’s face this Christmas. It’s been kind of a rough year for me – it’s been a rough month for me. Putting a smile on a child’s face – I can do that.

I drove to the store late this afternoon with my Operation Christmas Child shoebox and a brochure that outlined my options. Naturally, I waited until the last moment to do my shopping – the box is due at church in the morning.

Anyway, I could shop for a boy or a girl, ages 2-4, 5-9 or 10-14. Having much experience shopping for nieces and nephews, I steered clear of the boy ages 10-14 category – the toughest of all categories to shop for.

With just an hour and a half free in my Saturday schedule, I opted for what I thought was the easiest – girl, ages 2-4.  I was pretty confident I could find something to put a smile on a little girl’s face on Christmas morning.

At least that was until I started walking through the departments – toys, clothes, books and hygiene. The options were endless, the choices were difficult and when I had a collection of items for my box, I worried that either I wouldn’t have enough to make the box look full, or that the doll I picked out would take up too much space.

The box is sitting on the desk by my keyboard as I write this, and the bag of items is still on the dining room table – I’ll learn soon enough if my shopping skills were adequate.

Now, I think perhaps I should have given a bit more thought to one of the items I purchased. I have no idea where these gifts end up, but my 2-, 3- or 4-year-old girl is going to get a pair of mittens she may have absolutely no use for. (I’ve had the chills all day, which I’m sure impacted my decision on the pretty little pink knitted pair.)

As for the rest of the items, I hope she’ll be happy with a pack of pink and purple socks, a doll dressed in pink and blue, a pink Dora toothbrush (all little girls MUST have pink!) and a Berenstain Bears book – a favorite series of mine as a child. I’m hoping she’ll have a parent who can read it to her over and over again.

I haven’t decided if I’ll include a note in the box – it’s optional. I’m happy just knowing it will make a little girl smile – or at least thinking it will make a little girl smile. That’s good enough for me.

I know it isn’t much. I could have – should have – done more, but it’s a good first step. And best of all, it made me feel good. That’s the most wonderful thing about the Christmas season!