Are no traditions safe?

The annual Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling had been cancelled for this year due to health and safety fears. Possibly due to the saturated fat content of a big old hunk of Double Gloucester!

I need an American (resident) to do me a favour

Courtesy of Tampa Bay's Jason Bartlett stolen base last night American residents are entitled to a free Taco Bell taco. Would someone go claim mine and then tell me how it was?

Ta.

Finally we find out what doner kebab meat is made from...

...and, for fans of the tasty post chucking out time treat at least, it isn't good news. So, if you're ever unlucky enough to be in Wolverhampton, I would stay away from Pappu Sweet Centre and Catering.

Let them eat gefilte fish!

Things are hotting up in the Middle East again as the Lebanese demand that the Israelis stop stop trying to claim hummus and falafel as their own. The question on everyone's mind is whether the US will allow Israel to launch military strikes into Lebanon to stamp out this contagion.

No Child Left Behind - Florida style

Some schools in Florida are counting the time it takes their students to walk to lunch against the state's requirement for two and half hours of physical exercise each week. I suspect this won't help the state reduce their overall level of obesity from 23%. Of course, once the kids get to lunch they can stuff themselves full of their favourite vegetable: ketchup!

Say it ain't so!

I've cut out cod. I've cut out monk fish. But I'm not bloody cutting out anchovies so they just better go and find so more!

You are what you eat...

...and you probably wouldn't want to be a Hot Pocket Pepperoni Pizza anyway so it's just as well that Nestlé Foods is "recalling approximately (sic) 215,660 pounds" of the tasty treats which you will note are reassuringly marked with the "USDA mark of inspection". Apparently Nestlé believes that these frozen convenience "foods" might contain unidentified "foreign materials".

Have a nice day!

Attack of the K Street tomatoes

Remember those pesky salmonella tainted tomatoes not so long ago. You remember, the ones no one has as yet figured out where they came from. Well it seems that the reason non one has as yet figured out where they came from is due to the unstinting efforts of highly paid lobbyists for the food industry who wanted to make sure no one could know where they came from reduce unnecessary and costly paperwork.

Attention Minutemen!

As if you were not stretched thin enough already working valiantly to ensure that the residents of the Hamptons go without pool boys and house cleaners but now you've got to be on the look out for lorry loads of dodgy jalapeños as well.

We really don't pay you enough!

I don't know about you...

...but this has me worried! 36% of American commercial bee hives have been lost this year alone. Without bees much agriculture is impossible. I think the implications are obvious.

The perfect economic storm?

American maize prices have soared to record levels on the back of wet weather in the corn belt which have led to concerns about supply. I wouldn't switch the Hummer over to alco-gas just yet!

Holidaying in America?

Whatever you do don't eat tomatoes. It really is slipping into the third world and not too slowly either.

Please pay attention

I am only going to say this once! Cheez Whiz is not cheese! American cheese is not cheese! If there was anything approaching a trade descriptions act in the US you couldn't call anything with either of these petrochemicals on it a cheese steak! Got it?

Oh fuck, now I really, really want a cheese steak (with provolone of course).

I don't want to say "I told you so"...

...but I told you so as concerns mount over a shortage of kosher meat after the recent immigration raid at an abattoir in Iowa. At least it's after Passover!

Where's the beef?

Being stuffed down the unwilling throats of South Korean consumers as yet another bilateral "free" but not fair trade deal good only for US based multinational corporate interests is imposed on an unwilling citizenry.

Privatise it!

I noted the other day that the Bush administration had hidden away in their $700 million "aid" package to help the hungry a requirement to shamelessly promote the use of GM organisms. Today's NY Times has a story about the severe cutbacks in basic crop research worldwide that are preventing the development of resistant but non-GM crops. Noted in the article is that fact that the US is also planning on cutting back "by as much as 75 percent, its $59.5 million annual support for a global research network that focuses on improving crops vital to agriculture in poor countries". So we are willing to give away $700 million, largely to American agri-business companies who grow the crops that we give away "in kind", but are not willing to fund the basic but non-commercial research that will assist many countries become self-sustaining.

Slow news day at the Guardian?

It must be. They usually don't have time to think up tabloid style headlines like this: "Truffle kerfuffle grips Italy as rival takes root"

In which I reluctantly admit that Captain Codpiece is a genius

How else to explain the sequence of events that begins with Our Great Leader, instead of urging Americans to conserve energy, suggests that growing energy is this answers to fuel shortages and climate change. This then leads to rapidly rising food prices; they are also driven by increasing population and poor weather. The price of food skyrockets so rapidly that Afghan farmers switch from opium to wheat thereby solving both the problems of the narco-economy in Afghanistan and driving many addicts to give up their drugs! We still have to work out how these millions of ex-junkies will be able to afford to eat but I'm sure he has a plan for that up his sleeves!

Whatever happened to allowing the market to decide?

Captain Codpiece and his evil minions, like most "free market" capitalists, only favour allowing the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent invisible hand of the market to work its magic when they perceive said magic to favour their interests and when they perceive that it does not they demand government intervention and control. One wonders what they are so afraid of in the case of Creekwater Farms testing its cattle for mad cow in order to facilitate exports.

'Tis a thing of beauty...

...to watch the omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient invisible hand of the market at work as the profits of multinational agribusinesses soar as the growing global food crisis drives those poor to desperation. Normal service is resumed.