alt.energy.renewable

Maybe they can VooDoo up some real food?

wrote in message
news:ea5b3c25-d9fc-437b-aa49-6e29ff1df56d@h11g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
> Poor Haitians are now eating mud because of heartless American
> biofuel
> mandates!
>
> http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hcJ474CjaJGOUznskl4ZgTHdpxUAD8UFQVR00
>
> Poor Haitians Resort to Eating Dirt
>
> By JONATHAN M. KATZ - Jan 29, 2008
>
> PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's
> worst
> slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising,
> Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some
> take
> desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a
> 1-month-
> old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger
> pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central
> plateau.The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children
> here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite
> Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house
> with
> her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of
> dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.
>
> "When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three
> times
> a day," Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her
> lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds 3 ounces he weighed
> at birth. Though she likes their buttery, salty taste, Charlene said
> the cookies also give her stomach pains. "When I nurse, the baby
> sometimes seems colicky too," she said.
> Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil
> prices,
> needed for fertilizer, irrigation and transportation. Prices for
> basic
> ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the
> increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as
> well.
> The problem is particularly dire in the Caribbean, where island
> nations depend on imports and food prices are up 40 percent in
> places.
>
> The global price hikes, together with floods and crop damage from
> the
> 2007 hurricane season, prompted the U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency
> to declare states of emergency in Haiti and several other Caribbean
> countries. Caribbean leaders held an emergency summit in December to
> discuss cutting food taxes and creating large regional farms to
> reduce
> dependence on imports.
> At the market in the La Saline slum, two cups of rice now sell for
> 60
> cents, up 10 cents from December and 50 percent from a year ago.
> Beans, condensed milk and fruit have gone up at a similar rate, and
> even the price of the edible clay has risen over the past year by
> almost $1.50. Dirt to make 100 cookies now costs $5, the cookie
> makers
> say. Still, at about 5 cents apiece, the cookies are a bargain
> compared to food staples. About 80 percent of people in Haiti live
> on
> less than $2 a day and a tiny elite controls the economy.
> Merchants truck the dirt from the central town of Hinche to the La
> Saline market, a maze of tables of vegetables and meat swarming with
> flies. Women buy the dirt, then process it into mud cookies in
> places
> such as Fort Dimanche, a nearby shanty town. Carrying buckets of
> dirt
> and water up ladders to the roof of the former prison for which the
> slum is named, they strain out rocks and clumps on a sheet, and stir
> in shortening and salt. Then they pat the mixture into mud cookies
> and
> leave them to dry under the scorching sun.The finished cookies are
> carried in buckets to markets or sold on the streets.
> A reporter sampling a cookie found that it had a smooth consistency
> and sucked all the moisture out of the mouth as soon as it touched
> the
> tongue. For hours, an unpleasant taste of dirt lingered.
> Assessments of the health effects are mixed. Dirt can contain deadly
> parasites or toxins, but can also strengthen the immunity of fetuses
> in the womb to certain diseases, said Gerald N. Callahan, an
> immunology professor at Colorado State University who has studied
> geophagy, the scientific name for dirt-eating.
>
> Haitian doctors say depending on the cookies for sustenance risks
> malnutrition."Trust me, if I see someone eating those cookies, I
> will
> discourage it," said Dr. Gabriel Thimothee, executive director of
> Haiti's health ministry.Marie Noel, 40, sells the cookies in a
> market
> to provide for her seven children. Her family also eats them."I'm
> hoping one day I'll have enough food to eat, so I can stop eating
> these," she said. "I know it's not good for me."
> -------
> Other recent food horror news!
>
> "USA TODAY"
> http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2008-02-11-food-prices_N.htm
>
> "NATIONAL POST"
> http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2008-02-11-food-prices_N.htm
>
> "SUNDAY MIRROR"
> http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/sunday/2008/02/17/spaghetti-whoops-98487-20321660/
>
> See "The biofuel hoax is causing a world food crisis!" at:
> http://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html
>
> Christopher Calder
>
>
>