Survival Storehouse launches emergency products for boating and aviation in ... - Virtual-Strategy Magazine (press release)

(1888PressRelease) Lightweight long term food and water supplies for specific verticals drive sales for Australian survival supplies company.

Working with our customer base built up over 3 years of supplying Australians with Mainstay long term shelf life food and water supplies has lead SurvivalStorehouse.com to target specific industries within the Australian market to revolutionise the supply and storage of emergency survival supplies.

"The 5 year shelf life of all our products provide a significant saving for our customers. Only having to replace their emergency supplies every 5 years instead of 1 - 3 is a great way to control the costs of providing a product that will hopefully never be used", Survival Storehouse was quoted.

The lightweight nature of Mainstay food products, coupled with the Mainstay 5 year shelf life water sachets makes these packs perfect for aircraft and boats where weight is always a top priority. The Mainstay range was perfected and approved by the US Coast Guard making it a great resource for any boating owner or associated company.

The Mainstay 2400 bar only weighs in at 446 grams and has enough vitamins and minerals to sustain a person in a difficult situation for 2 days.

For boating and aviation enthusiasts, having a 5 year shelf life emergency food and water kit is a mandatory requirement and has never been easier to source and store.

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Central African Republic: Looming Food Crisis in Country

Bangui — Humanitarian agencies are warning of a looming food crisis in parts of the Central African Republic (CAR), a result of the insecurity that has displaced thousands of people and disrupted cultivation and trade.

Clashes between government and rebel forces in December and early January left some parts of CAR - and an estimated 800,000 people - under the control of the rebel Séléka coalition.

"Between July and September, there will be serious food shortages in the most affected areas. So the first priority is to restart programmes that have been disrupted in these areas," Jean Martin Bauer, an analyst with the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said.

Food prices are increasing, according to the findings of a recent assessment by WFP and its partners.

"Since December 2012, trade has been interrupted between the area held by the Séléka coalition and the rest of the country, bringing transactions to a halt and leading to sharp price increases.

The cost of a food basket has increased by 40 percent in the area under the control of the Central African armed forces. Some of the zones under the control of the Séléka are experiencing food deficits due to price increases," stated a 15 February statement by WFP.

Humanitarian officials expressed concern over the upcoming cropping season. "We are very concerned about prospect for the 2013 growing season, which is due to start in just a few weeks. Land preparation, which should have begun, is behind schedule in many places due to insecurity," said Rockaya Fall, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative in CAR.

The disruption of trade has caused income sources to decline, adds the statement: "The marketing season of the annual cotton crop, a lifeline for the northern part of the country, has yet to start in the Séléka zone, depriving farmers [of] their main income source."

An estimated 80,538 people in the Séléka zone are at risk of food insecurity in the May-September lean season.

The situation in CAR remains unpredictable despite an 11 January ceasefire, added a report released by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on 18 February, which noted that a lack of humanitarian access due to insecurity, especially in the east, and poor roads are hindering the provision of assistance.

Access

Aid officials are calling for access to Séléka-held areas.

"The main problem is to open a humanitarian corridor in the Séléka-held areas. Once free to move, we will be able to bring the affected population together so as to provide the necessary assistance," said Kaarina Immonen, the UN deputy special representative for CAR.

Other main humanitarian needs include healthcare and education.

"We must go to those who are suffering. But first we would like to know and to understand the health situation on the ground before we respond to the needs of the population in the areas of conflict," said Honorat Ouilibona-Cockciss, the chief of staff in the ministry of health.

The number of patients seeking medical care is on the rise. In the area of Damara, 75km from the capital Bangui, for example, health centres are recording up to 200 consultations each day despite inadequate staff.

Almost all of the schools in the Séléka-held areas have been closed, with at least 166,000 children out of school, according to OCHA. Some teachers have also fled, according to Henry Sylvain Yakara, a national humanitarian affairs officer with OCHA.

The Séléka-rebels also destroyed some school facilities and were using some schools buildings as their bases, added Yakara.

Attacks continuing

Despite the 11 January peace accord, and the later formation of a government of national unity integrating the Séléka rebels, attacks are continuing.

In early February, for example, 2,300 people fled the southeastern CAR region of Mobaye for the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) area of Mobayi-Mbongo after a Séléka attack. Some 4,500 people had previously fled to DRC in the past weeks, with hundreds of others seeking refuge in Chad.

The Séléka rebels comprise militias from the Union des forces démocratiques pour le rassemblement (UFDR), the Convention Patriotique pour le Salut Wa Kodro (CSPK) and Convention des patriotes pour la justice et la paix (CPJP), who were seeking to overthrow the CAR government.

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations.]

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WEP voices concern over food crisis in Sahel

New York, Feb 21 : A year after the international community launched a massive humanitarian response to the food crisis affecting Africa's Sahel region, millions of people there are still affected by drought and require assistance, according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

"This year, some nine million people across the Sahel will still require food assistance from WFP, through emergency food assistance, rural development, nutrition and education activities," said Ertharin Cousin, WFP Executive Director.

Cousin was the host of a high-level event in Rome bringing together leaders of humanitarian agencies, government representatives from affected countries and major donors to review the effectiveness of the assistance provided to the region.

Last year the international community helped to avert a humanitarian catastrophe by providing $1.2 billion in assistance to around 10 million people across eight countries in the Sahel, noted a news release issued by WFP.

"However, millions of people in the region are still affected by drought, with close to 1.5 million children under the age of five at risk of severe acute malnutrition," said the agency.

Cousin emphasized that boosting food security and building resilience lies at the heart of the collective efforts to change the pattern of recurring drought and continue on the path towards a better future.

WFP says that crop prospects are currently encouraging, but there is a high risk of future shocks, due to increased rates of poverty and undernourishment, extreme weather, environmental degradation, low investment in agriculture, high prices and vulnerability to market volatility.

Also, the conflict in Mali has triggered widespread displacement in the region, uprooting half a million people and placing pressure on communities still recovering from drought.

The western part of the Sahel region, which stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, and includes Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and parts of Sudan, Cameroon and Nigeria, is facing a swathe of problems, which are not only political but also involve security, humanitarian resilience and human rights.

Last September, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed former Italian prime minister Romano Prodi as his Special Envoy for the Sahel and tasked him with shaping and mobilizing an effective UN and international response to the multiple crises facing the region.

"The focus of the United Nations strategy for the Sahel is on the people of the region, to help them address the root causes of instability, with special emphasis on marginalized communities," said Prodi. "My role is to bring the best minds and all the resources possible around key long-term development issues that critically affect the peoples of the region."

Wednesday's event also featured a short documentary film, "The Human Chain," which chronicles the humanitarian response to last year's Sahel crisis, illustrates various forms of assistance - including cash and vouchers, special nutrition programmes to prevent severe cases of malnutrition as well as support for smallholder farmers to improve their self-reliance in the face of difficult climatic and economic conditions.

--IBNS Post your comment

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'A Place at the Table' makes a persuasive case for why millions are going without food

In a country with an overabundance of food, why are there an estimated 49 million Americans who do not know where their next meal is coming from? “A Place at the Table,” a documentary directed by Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush, seeks answers by going directly to the people involved – Washington lawmakers, authors, economists, and, above all, the people who are hurting.

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We first meet Rosie, a grade-schooler in rural Colorado whose family of seven, because its income exceeds the annual limit of $28,000 per family of four, doesn’t qualify for food stamps. Her teacher is at first perplexed as to why she is so unresponsive in class until the obvious hits home: Although Rosie does not appear markedly malnourished, she is chronically hungry.

The film makes the point that in America we don’t think a child is severely hungry unless he or she looks like a skin-and-bones sub-Saharan sufferer. But all body types can qualify. In fact, as Raj Patel, the author of “Stuffed & Starved,” says, hunger and obesity, so often founded on cheap carbohydrates, are closely linked. “They are both signs of insufficient foods you need to be healthy.” (A staggering statistic: By one estimate, 1 in 3 children born in America in the year 2000 will develop Type 2 diabetes.)

Many of the hungry are too proud to talk about it. A Colorado policeman, whose job can’t fully support him, describes his experience procuring necessities at a food bank. Rosie’s mother, who waitresses, can’t afford vegetables for her family.

The filmmakers make a persuasive case that the lack of availability of fruits and vegetables in these “food desert” communities is a direct result of corporate greed. Why incur the cost of shipping these nutritious, perishable foodstuffs to outlying regions when you can maximize your profits selling to the big chains?
Nearly $20 billion in corporate farm subsidies are awarded by the US Department of Agriculture annually, of which 70 percent goes to the largest and most centralized farms – the ones with the most clout and the ones that, thanks to cheap subsidies, produce the corn, soybeans, and wheat that underlie so much of the junk food we eat. Much of this argument was elaborated in an earlier documentary, “Food, Inc.,” also a production of Participant Media.

In addition, “A Place at the Table” attempts to provide an overview of the history of hunger in America. The survey is simplistic and scattershot: We are told that farm subsidies came about in response to the Great Depression; that the 1968 CBS documentary “Hunger in America” put the crisis on the map; and that by the late 1970s, with the introduction of food stamps and the school lunch program, hunger in American had been “virtually eradicated.”

Then came the big bad ’80s and hunger returned with a vengeance. The culprits: tax cuts, the rise of corporate welfare for agribusiness, the decline in social programs, and the rampant belief that the hungry did this to themselves – and that the churches and the charities and the genius of the free market system could right these wrongs.

Obviously the situation is far more complex than this précis suggests. (Anybody who thinks hunger in America was “virtually eradicated by the late ’70s” wasn’t looking very hard.) And yet the central thesis holds. As actor Jeff Bridges, who is interviewed extensively in the film, says, “We don’t fund our Department of Defense through charity.” Bridges, who has been active since at least the early ’80s in the anti-hunger movement, is the national chairman of the Share Our Strength/No Kid Hungry campaign. He gives a good name to celebrity activism.

“If another country was doing this to our kids, we’d be at war,” he says. For those who do not respond to the moral arguments for ending hunger through greater governmental involvement, he also echoes the sentiments of so many other commentators in this film: A malnourished population is a security risk. “It’s about patriotism,” he says. One thing is clear from “A Place at the Table”: You cannot answer the question “Why are people hungry?,” without also asking “Why are people poor?” Grade: B+ (Rated PG for thematic elements and brief mild language.)

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Insurgency threatens food crisis in Central African Republic - WFP

GENEVA (Reuters) - Insecurity in Central African Republic threatens a severe food crisis this year, the U.N. World Food Programme said on Friday, citing a doubling of prices for staples such as corn after a month-long insurgency.

Some 800,000 people live in the central third of CAR, an area still held by the Seleka rebel coalition.

Widespread looting had reduced household production as well as stocks of food, seed and animals, and insecurity was preventing farmers from going about their work, it said. Food in CAR comes mainly from subsistence farming and market gardening.

The mineral-rich former French colony signed a ceasefire deal with Seleka on January 11 after an insurgency that swept to within striking distance of the capital.

Humanitarian access to that area must be ensured to avoid a crisis, WFP said. Farmers in the northern part of that area were being deprived of their main income source because they cannot get their already-harvested cotton crop to market, it said.

Citing a food security assessment by the United Nations and non-governmental organisations, WFP said food looked set to become especially short in the May to September rainy season.

WFP had been distributing aid to 200,000 people in the area controlled by Seleka before the insurgency and says at least 80,000 people now faced a severe risk of food shortage.

Seleka, a coalition of five separate rebel groups, launched its insurgency in early December, accusing President Francois Bozize of reneging on a 2007 peace deal supposed to provide jobs and money to insurgents who laid down their weapons.

"The cost of a food basket has increased by 40 percent in the area under the control of the central African armed forces. Some of the zones under the control of the Seleka are experiencing food deficits due to price increases," WFP said.

Central African Republic, with a population of about 4.5 million, remains one of the least developed countries on the planet despite rich deposits of gold, diamonds and uranium.

The country is one of a number in the region where U.S. Special Forces are helping local soldiers hunt down the Lord's Resistance Army, an unrelated rebel group that has killed thousands of civilians across four nations.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Copyright © 2013 Reuters

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How Food Companies Trick Consumers Into Eating Their Unhealthy Products

According to Michael Moss, the Pulitzer prizing-winning reporter and author of the new book Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, executives at the major food behemoths – Kraft (KRFT), General Mills (GIS) and Nestle – have known for years that the sugar, salt and fat added to their cereals, soups, tomato sauces and hundreds of other food products have put millions of individuals’ health at risk. But the quest for bigger profits and a larger share of the consumer market has compelled the processed food industry to turn a blind eye to the dangers and consequences of eating those very products.

Moss’ book exposes the inner workings of the food industry and details how these food giants spend millions of dollars to make the food we eat more addictive. After reading his book, which took Moss four years to write and report, one may never want to consume another Cheez-It cracker or Lunchable again.

How do the food giants trick consumers? Moss gives several examples:

“At Cargill, scientists are altering the physical shape of salt, pulverizing it into a fine powder to hit the taste buds faster and harder, improving what the company calls its ‘flavor burst.’”“Scientists at Nestle are currently fiddling with the distribution and shape of fat globules to affect their absorption rate and, as it’s known in the industry, ‘their mouthfeel.’”“To make a new soda guaranteed to create a craving requires the high math of regression analysis and intricate charts to plot what industry insiders call the “bliss point,” or the precise amount of sugar or fat that will send consumers over the moon.”

Moss says the food companies profiled in his book understand that salt, sugar and fat “are their pillars, their holy grail.” These companies employ cadres of scientists “who specialize in the senses” and the industry “methodically studies and controls” the use of salt, sugar and fat.

Even though consumers may think food companies are trying to help their waistlines by offering “low fat” or “low sodium” items, that’s not actually the case. Companies will add extra sugar to “low fat” products and “low sodium” offerings tend to have both higher quantities of sugar and fat.

Processed foods are designed “to make people feel hungrier,” Moss writes. “The processed food industry has helped foster overconsumption. Salt, sugar and fat are the foundation of processed food.”

Rising obesity rates are a global problem. In the U.S. alone, two-thirds of adults are either obese or overweight. The Centers for Disease Control estimate that nearly half of American adults will be obese by 2030. One in six American children is obese today.

Related: Obesity to Cost Taxpayers 'Billions of Dollars': Weight Watchers CEO

Overeating and lack of exercise are the two culprits blamed for weight gain. But cheap food and the general convenience and availability of it have also contributed to the obesity crisis.

Moss provides startling evidence of just how much food people are consuming these days:

The average American eats 33 pounds of cheese every year, triple what we ate in 1970.Americans ingest 8,500 milligrams of salt a day, double the recommended amount.We consume 71 pounds of caloric sweeteners each year, equivalent to 22 teaspoons of sugar per person, per day.

The addiction to salt and sugar does not end with consumers. The food giants' “relentless drive” to reach maximum profits at the lowest possible cost has given these companies no incentive to use real, wholesome ingredients. Sugar, for example, not only sweetens but “replaces more costly ingredients, like tomatoes in ketchup to add bulk and texture,” according to Moss.

“It costs more money to use real herbs and spices,” Moss says. "Economics drive companies to spend as little money as possible in making processed foods. That’s the dilemma.”

Related: Why We’re Fat: It’s the Government and Wall Street’s Fault: Marion Nestle Says

But food executives need to seriously start examining the consequences of their actions, Moss warns.

“They’re coming under increasing pressure from consumers,” he argues. “We care more and more about what we’re putting into our mouths and bodies. The food industry is...where tobacco was in the 1990s – at the verge of losing the public trust. That’s a very dangerous spot for the food industry to be in.”

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Fact vs. Fiction in Food Crisis Management - AgWired

Crisis management. We hear a lot about it and any company wants to be ready to handle one if it should happen. How do you deal with fact vs. fiction, especially in the food industry? At today’s Annual Meat Conference we heard from Sue Borra, Senior Vice President of Communications, Food Marketing Institute and Eric Mittenthal, Vice President, Public Affairs, American Meat Institute, on this topic.

When it comes to food retail Sue says food safety is the number one concern. They place extremely high value on what their customers think. So if a crisis breaks out they want to be able to communicate rapidly, effectively and with as much information as possible. Both Sue and Eric emphasized the importance of planning ahead and being ready to be proactive. Their organizations are constantly looking ahead and prepare information that is readily available to their members.

I brought up social media since we’ve seen both fact and fiction explode overnight on some issues, including in the food world. Sue says that most retailers are now active in social media and they monitor what is being said about their companies. It’s about trust and transparency! Very important words.

Listen in to my conversation with Sue and Eric to learn more about their thoughts on this subject here: Interview with Sue Borra & Eric Mittenthal

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