alt.energy.renewable

And what would they be eating if the USA suddenly ceased to exist? Mud.
Perhaps if the dirtbags that run that country spent as much time trying to
figure out how to feed their people rather than stealing them blind, the
situation would not be nearly so dire.

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
>
>
>