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"content": "\u003cp>Move over, New York. The City of Richmond is going front and center in the war on soda pop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On May 16, the Richmond City Council voted to put a measure on its November ballot that would tax sugary drinks. Two weeks later, when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a ban on the sale of such drinks in large containers, he attracted \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/nyregion/bloomberg-plans-a-ban-on-large-sugared-drinks.html?_r=1\">national headlines\u003c/a>. Now our colleague at PBS NewsHour, Spencer Michaels, has visited Richmond to report on the city’s proposed tax.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/3QzzG-7q5CU\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both measures are meant to reduce obesity. But the Richmond measure would allow the sale of sugar-sweetened drinks in containers of any size while imposing a tax of 1 cent per ounce. A separate advisory measure would request that the City Council use money raised through the tax to support youth sports and health education, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_20636385/richmond-place-soda-tax-november-ballot\">Contra Costa Times\u003c/a> reports.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also unlike Bloomberg’s proposal, which only needs a nod from the Board of Health he appointed, Richmond’s measure must be approved by a majority of voters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To that end, the measure’s sponsor, City Councilman Jeff Ritterman, is trying to raise money for a campaign in favor of it, says \u003ca href=\"http://richmondconfidential.org/2012/06/05/ritterman-hopes-to-raise-money-for-soda-tax-campaign/\">Richmond Confidential\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Ritterman has appealed to residents to facilitate fund raising events and throw house parties in the community to raise awareness about the soda tax issue and donating to the campaign. “We can win this, but I need to raise $100,000 for mailings, printing, robo-calls, and lawn signs,” said Ritterman in an email sent out to Richmond residents last week. “We don’t need the money all at once, but we need $15,000 right away for a mailing and for door hangers. We have already started precinct walking.”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\n",
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"title": "Video: Richmond Soda Tax Featured on NewsHour | KQED",
"description": "Move over, New York. The City of Richmond is going front and center in the war on soda pop. On May 16, the Richmond City Council voted to put a measure on its November ballot that would tax sugary drinks. Two weeks later, when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a ban on the sale of such drinks in large containers, he attracted national headlines. Now our colleague at PBS NewsHour, Spencer Michaels, has visited Richmond to report on the city's proposed tax. Both measures are meant to reduce obesity. But the Richmond measure would allow the sale of",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Move over, New York. The City of Richmond is going front and center in the war on soda pop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On May 16, the Richmond City Council voted to put a measure on its November ballot that would tax sugary drinks. Two weeks later, when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a ban on the sale of such drinks in large containers, he attracted \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/nyregion/bloomberg-plans-a-ban-on-large-sugared-drinks.html?_r=1\">national headlines\u003c/a>. Now our colleague at PBS NewsHour, Spencer Michaels, has visited Richmond to report on the city’s proposed tax.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/3QzzG-7q5CU\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both measures are meant to reduce obesity. But the Richmond measure would allow the sale of sugar-sweetened drinks in containers of any size while imposing a tax of 1 cent per ounce. A separate advisory measure would request that the City Council use money raised through the tax to support youth sports and health education, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_20636385/richmond-place-soda-tax-november-ballot\">Contra Costa Times\u003c/a> reports.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also unlike Bloomberg’s proposal, which only needs a nod from the Board of Health he appointed, Richmond’s measure must be approved by a majority of voters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To that end, the measure’s sponsor, City Councilman Jeff Ritterman, is trying to raise money for a campaign in favor of it, says \u003ca href=\"http://richmondconfidential.org/2012/06/05/ritterman-hopes-to-raise-money-for-soda-tax-campaign/\">Richmond Confidential\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Ritterman has appealed to residents to facilitate fund raising events and throw house parties in the community to raise awareness about the soda tax issue and donating to the campaign. “We can win this, but I need to raise $100,000 for mailings, printing, robo-calls, and lawn signs,” said Ritterman in an email sent out to Richmond residents last week. “We don’t need the money all at once, but we need $15,000 right away for a mailing and for door hangers. We have already started precinct walking.”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Tobacco Tax Losing by 63,000 Votes",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_67333\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 254px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/06/smoker-300x280.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-67333\" title=\"smoker-300x280\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/06/smoker-300x280.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"254\" height=\"238\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Dr. Jauss/Flickr)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/lowdown/2012/05/18/prop-29-should-smoking-in-california-be-more-expensive/\">Proposition 29\u003c/a>, the $1.00 per pack cigarette tax is currently losing by about 63,000 votes out of approximately 3,853,000 cast. That’s a 1.6 percent margin. You can check out the latest vote tally at the \u003ca href=\"http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/ballot-measures/\">Secretary of State’s ballot measure results page\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite some media reports that the results are final, the election is still too close to call. A spokesperson for the California Secretary of State’s Office says counties have 28 days from the election to turn in unprocessed and vote-by-mail ballots. The Secretary of State won’t turn in an official “statement of vote” until 38 days after the election.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Hannah Dreier of AP notes below, “there typically are many late-arriving ballots from early and absentee voting not counted until after election day. These ballots typically comprise up to 20 percent of all votes, meaning potentially hundreds of thousands of votes were still to be counted statewide.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Update 9:50 a.m.\u003c/strong> From the \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/06/06/BA8T1OTODR.DTL&tsp=1\">Chronicle\u003c/a>:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Ricardo Quinto, a spokesman for the Yes on 29 campaign, said proponents were not conceding defeat. He said an estimated 200,000 ballots remain to be counted.\n\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Full AP story:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>A California initiative to raise the tax on tobacco products was losing early Wednesday but the vote was still too close to call because hundreds of thousands of ballots potentially remained uncounted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The day after Election Day, Proposition 29 was losing by just over 1 percent, or about 64,000 votes out of more than 3.8 million counted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, even with all precincts reporting, there typically are many late-arriving ballots from early and absentee voting not counted until after election day. These ballots typically comprise up to 20 percent of all votes, meaning potentially hundreds of thousands of votes were still to be counted statewide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It could be days or longer before a winner is declared.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cycling legend Lance Armstrong backed the measure to impose an additional $1-per-pack tax on cigarettes to fund cancer research. A $50 million opposition ad campaign was led by Big Tobacco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In March, a statewide poll suggested the Proposition 29 would pass with two-thirds approval.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The situation reminded some of a 2006 California cigarette tax measure that was leading by wide margins until tobacco companies spent $66 million to defeat it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The attempt to hike taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products grew into a national fight last month with tobacco companies pouring in millions to quash the effort and celebrities including the New York City Mayor urging voters to support it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As returns came in, both camps said they expected a close race but remained confident they would emerge the winner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We expected that as voters took a look at the measure, they would recognize the serious flaws, and as well intentioned as the measure is, they would realize it’s not right for California,” Beth Miller, spokeswoman for the No on 29 campaign said Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tobacco taxes have been proven to reduce smoking. But opponents said the initiative would create an unaccountable bureaucracy in charge of doling out the tax revenue, which is expected to start at $735 million a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An extra tax in the nation’s most populous state also could mean major losses for tobacco companies, and Proposition 29 supporters said industry heavyweights were inventing arguments to obscure their true motive _ safeguarding profits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think the public health message has gotten through the smoke screen of the tobacco companies’ nearly $50 million misinformation campaign,” Jim Knox of the American Cancer Society said Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Armstrong and a coalition of anti-smoking groups raised about $18 million to bolster the measure. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave $500,000 to the campaign to help offset the industry donations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Majorities in the Democratic-leaning counties along the Northern California coast favored the tax, while majorities in most other regions others opposed it. Voters on both sides expressed strong convictions as they cast their ballots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that we should aggressively discourage smoking _ make it less convenient, make it more expensive,” said Susan Hyman of Long Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In nearby Glendale, Craig Jerpseth, a 43 year-old nurse, was equally certain about voting the measure down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I hope we don’t get any more taxes. That’s pretty much it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A slew of newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, opposed the measure while proclaiming their reluctance to side with tobacco companies. They argued that the revenue should go to the state, which Gov. Jerry Brown announced last month now faces a deficit of $16 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With a smoking rate of 12.1 percent, California has not raised these taxes since 2000. If the measure passes, California would still have only the 16th highest tax rate in the nation.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"description": "Proposition 29, the $1.00 per pack cigarette tax is currently losing by about 63,000 votes out of approximately 3,853,000 cast. That's a 1.6 percent margin. You can check out the latest vote tally at the Secretary of State's ballot measure results page. Despite some media reports that the results are final, the election is still too close to call. A spokesperson for the California Secretary of State's Office says counties have 28 days from the election to turn in unprocessed and vote-by-mail ballots. The Secretary of State won't turn in an official "statement of vote" until 38 days after the",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_67333\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 254px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/06/smoker-300x280.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-67333\" title=\"smoker-300x280\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/06/smoker-300x280.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"254\" height=\"238\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Dr. Jauss/Flickr)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/lowdown/2012/05/18/prop-29-should-smoking-in-california-be-more-expensive/\">Proposition 29\u003c/a>, the $1.00 per pack cigarette tax is currently losing by about 63,000 votes out of approximately 3,853,000 cast. That’s a 1.6 percent margin. You can check out the latest vote tally at the \u003ca href=\"http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/ballot-measures/\">Secretary of State’s ballot measure results page\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite some media reports that the results are final, the election is still too close to call. A spokesperson for the California Secretary of State’s Office says counties have 28 days from the election to turn in unprocessed and vote-by-mail ballots. The Secretary of State won’t turn in an official “statement of vote” until 38 days after the election.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Hannah Dreier of AP notes below, “there typically are many late-arriving ballots from early and absentee voting not counted until after election day. These ballots typically comprise up to 20 percent of all votes, meaning potentially hundreds of thousands of votes were still to be counted statewide.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Update 9:50 a.m.\u003c/strong> From the \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/06/06/BA8T1OTODR.DTL&tsp=1\">Chronicle\u003c/a>:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Ricardo Quinto, a spokesman for the Yes on 29 campaign, said proponents were not conceding defeat. He said an estimated 200,000 ballots remain to be counted.\n\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Full AP story:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>A California initiative to raise the tax on tobacco products was losing early Wednesday but the vote was still too close to call because hundreds of thousands of ballots potentially remained uncounted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The day after Election Day, Proposition 29 was losing by just over 1 percent, or about 64,000 votes out of more than 3.8 million counted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, even with all precincts reporting, there typically are many late-arriving ballots from early and absentee voting not counted until after election day. These ballots typically comprise up to 20 percent of all votes, meaning potentially hundreds of thousands of votes were still to be counted statewide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It could be days or longer before a winner is declared.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cycling legend Lance Armstrong backed the measure to impose an additional $1-per-pack tax on cigarettes to fund cancer research. A $50 million opposition ad campaign was led by Big Tobacco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In March, a statewide poll suggested the Proposition 29 would pass with two-thirds approval.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The situation reminded some of a 2006 California cigarette tax measure that was leading by wide margins until tobacco companies spent $66 million to defeat it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The attempt to hike taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products grew into a national fight last month with tobacco companies pouring in millions to quash the effort and celebrities including the New York City Mayor urging voters to support it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As returns came in, both camps said they expected a close race but remained confident they would emerge the winner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We expected that as voters took a look at the measure, they would recognize the serious flaws, and as well intentioned as the measure is, they would realize it’s not right for California,” Beth Miller, spokeswoman for the No on 29 campaign said Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tobacco taxes have been proven to reduce smoking. But opponents said the initiative would create an unaccountable bureaucracy in charge of doling out the tax revenue, which is expected to start at $735 million a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An extra tax in the nation’s most populous state also could mean major losses for tobacco companies, and Proposition 29 supporters said industry heavyweights were inventing arguments to obscure their true motive _ safeguarding profits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think the public health message has gotten through the smoke screen of the tobacco companies’ nearly $50 million misinformation campaign,” Jim Knox of the American Cancer Society said Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Armstrong and a coalition of anti-smoking groups raised about $18 million to bolster the measure. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave $500,000 to the campaign to help offset the industry donations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Majorities in the Democratic-leaning counties along the Northern California coast favored the tax, while majorities in most other regions others opposed it. Voters on both sides expressed strong convictions as they cast their ballots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that we should aggressively discourage smoking _ make it less convenient, make it more expensive,” said Susan Hyman of Long Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In nearby Glendale, Craig Jerpseth, a 43 year-old nurse, was equally certain about voting the measure down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I hope we don’t get any more taxes. That’s pretty much it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A slew of newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, opposed the measure while proclaiming their reluctance to side with tobacco companies. They argued that the revenue should go to the state, which Gov. Jerry Brown announced last month now faces a deficit of $16 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With a smoking rate of 12.1 percent, California has not raised these taxes since 2000. If the measure passes, California would still have only the 16th highest tax rate in the nation.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "oakland-va-office-mishandled-claims-inspector-general-finds",
"title": "Errors, Delays at Oakland VA Office Leave Northern California Vets in The Lurch",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cstrong>by Aaron Glantz, \u003ca href=\"http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/oakland-va-office-mishandled-claims-inspector-general-finds-16163\">California Watch\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Staff at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Oakland office regularly made incorrect decisions when evaluating disability claims and failed to inform veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan that they are entitled to free mental health care, according to \u003ca href=\"http://www.va.gov/oig/pubs/VAOIG-12-00247-175.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a report released today [PDF]\u003c/a> by the agency’s inspector general.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65066\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/05/U.S.-Army-Soldiers20111128.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-65066\" title=\"U.S. Army Soldiers20111128\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/05/U.S.-Army-Soldiers20111128-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">U.S. Army Soldiers fduring ceremony to honor fallen service members at Forward Operating Base in Iraq, 2007. (Senior Airman Bradley A. Lail/U.S. Air Force)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The report also found that the office, which handles all disability claims for veterans who live from Bakersfield to the Oregon border, had failed to close claims that, at the time of an inspection last December, had languished for up to eight and a half years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Processing delays occurred because of unclear guidance,” the inspector general wrote. “As a result, veterans did not receive timely benefit payments.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The inspector general also found several instances of veterans’ mail being misplaced, which the report said further contributed to delays and mistakes in deciding disability claims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report comes at a time of \u003ca href=\"http://www.baycitizen.org/veterans/story/send-immediate-help-oaklands-va-say-bay/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">increasing scrutiny\u003c/a> for the VA, which has seen the backlog of disability claims increase to 864,000 nationally under the Obama administration. \u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over 45 percent of the more than 1.5 million veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have returned home and filed a disability claim. The most common claims granted have been for tinnitus, back pain and post-traumatic stress disorder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem is particularly acute in Northern California, where returning soldiers \u003ca href=\"http://www.baycitizen.org/veterans/story/reps-question-va-official-about-delays/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">must wait an average of 320 days for a decision\u003c/a>, according to figures provided by the VA to Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton. Nearly 35,000 Northern California veterans are currently waiting for the department to issue a ruling on a disability claim; 82.5 percent have been waiting for at least 125 days.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">The problem is particularly acute in Northern California, where returning soldiers must wait an average of 320 days for a decision…\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The inspector general performed a limited review of 90 cases as part of its report and found the Oakland office failed to process 39 percent of them correctly. For cases related to traumatic brain injury, a signature wound of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the inspector general found 57 percent of claims were mishandled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The errors in processing claims often led to delays and payments that were either too large or too small, the inspector general found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Each individual veteran has to go up against this error-ridden institution,” said Amy Fairweather, policy director at Swords to Plowshares, a San Francisco veteran services nonprofit. “The bottom line is poverty, untreated mental illness and obviously we see suicides.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The numbers cited by the inspector general paint a starker picture than \u003ca href=\"http://www.baycitizen.org/veterans/story/va-staff-errors-delay-veterans-benefits/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">VA officials have previously acknowledged\u003c/a>. In testimony before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs on April 18, Tom Murphy, head of the VA’s Compensation Service, said claims adjusters at the VA Oakland office made mistakes on 26 percent of claims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The “audit throws into question (the) VA’s ability to honestly and accurately tell Congress how bad the situation in Oakland has deteriorated,” said Paul Sullivan, who serves as managing director of public affairs and veterans outreach for the Washington law firm Bergmann & Moore. Sullivan also testified at the hearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A VA spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request to comment for this story. In his written response to the report, the director of the Oakland office, Douglas Bragg, concurred with the inspector general’s findings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an e-mailed response to questions, Rep. Wally Herger, R-Marysville, said it was “appalling” that the inspector general found that the Oakland office failed to follow a department policy prescribing a monthly review of all claims older than one year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Herger, who met in March with VA Under Secretary for Benefits Allison Hickey to discuss the claims backlog, said he would “continue to closely monitor the situation to ensure our veterans receive timely service.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bragg and Willie Clark, the agency’s western regional director, have agreed to answer questions on the backlog from the California congressional delegation at a public event at San Francisco’s War Memorial Building on May 21.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Veterans with pending claims have also been invited to attend the meeting and speak about their experience with delays. According to Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, VA staff will be available to help resolve claims in a separate meeting room.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement responding to the inspector general’s report, Rep. McNerney, who sits on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, called the delays at the Oakland office “inexcusable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The delays and inaccuracies we have seen are disturbing,” he said. “The veterans who are being subjected to these problems cannot wait for another report from the IG to shed light on the issue. The VA needs to take steps now to right these wrongs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.va.gov/oig/pubs/VAOIG-12-00242-177.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">In a separate report [PDF]\u003c/a> also released today, the inspector general found the VA’s San Diego regional office made errors in 53 percent of the 79 claims sampled as part of its inspection. According to the VA, the San Diego office has a backlog of more than 30,000 claims, with 62.5 percent of veterans waiting more than four months for a decision:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With today’s release of VA’s Inspector General’s audits for San Diego and Oakland, a reasonable person can conclude nearly all of the Veterans Benefits Administration remains deeply mired in crisis, with little chance of recovery unless President Obama and Congress act immediately.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Aaron Glantz is an investigative journalist for \u003ca href=\"http://californiawatch.org/\">California Watch\u003c/a>\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"description": "by Aaron Glantz, California Watch Staff at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Oakland office regularly made incorrect decisions when evaluating disability claims and failed to inform veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan that they are entitled to free mental health care, according to a report released today by the agency’s inspector general. The report also found that the office, which handles all disability claims for veterans who live from Bakersfield to the Oregon border, had failed to close claims that, at the time of an inspection last December, had languished for up to eight and a half years.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>by Aaron Glantz, \u003ca href=\"http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/oakland-va-office-mishandled-claims-inspector-general-finds-16163\">California Watch\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Staff at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Oakland office regularly made incorrect decisions when evaluating disability claims and failed to inform veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan that they are entitled to free mental health care, according to \u003ca href=\"http://www.va.gov/oig/pubs/VAOIG-12-00247-175.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a report released today [PDF]\u003c/a> by the agency’s inspector general.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65066\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/05/U.S.-Army-Soldiers20111128.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-65066\" title=\"U.S. Army Soldiers20111128\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/05/U.S.-Army-Soldiers20111128-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">U.S. Army Soldiers fduring ceremony to honor fallen service members at Forward Operating Base in Iraq, 2007. (Senior Airman Bradley A. Lail/U.S. Air Force)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The report also found that the office, which handles all disability claims for veterans who live from Bakersfield to the Oregon border, had failed to close claims that, at the time of an inspection last December, had languished for up to eight and a half years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Processing delays occurred because of unclear guidance,” the inspector general wrote. “As a result, veterans did not receive timely benefit payments.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The inspector general also found several instances of veterans’ mail being misplaced, which the report said further contributed to delays and mistakes in deciding disability claims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report comes at a time of \u003ca href=\"http://www.baycitizen.org/veterans/story/send-immediate-help-oaklands-va-say-bay/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">increasing scrutiny\u003c/a> for the VA, which has seen the backlog of disability claims increase to 864,000 nationally under the Obama administration. \u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over 45 percent of the more than 1.5 million veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have returned home and filed a disability claim. The most common claims granted have been for tinnitus, back pain and post-traumatic stress disorder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem is particularly acute in Northern California, where returning soldiers \u003ca href=\"http://www.baycitizen.org/veterans/story/reps-question-va-official-about-delays/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">must wait an average of 320 days for a decision\u003c/a>, according to figures provided by the VA to Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton. Nearly 35,000 Northern California veterans are currently waiting for the department to issue a ruling on a disability claim; 82.5 percent have been waiting for at least 125 days.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">The problem is particularly acute in Northern California, where returning soldiers must wait an average of 320 days for a decision…\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The inspector general performed a limited review of 90 cases as part of its report and found the Oakland office failed to process 39 percent of them correctly. For cases related to traumatic brain injury, a signature wound of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the inspector general found 57 percent of claims were mishandled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The errors in processing claims often led to delays and payments that were either too large or too small, the inspector general found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Each individual veteran has to go up against this error-ridden institution,” said Amy Fairweather, policy director at Swords to Plowshares, a San Francisco veteran services nonprofit. “The bottom line is poverty, untreated mental illness and obviously we see suicides.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The numbers cited by the inspector general paint a starker picture than \u003ca href=\"http://www.baycitizen.org/veterans/story/va-staff-errors-delay-veterans-benefits/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">VA officials have previously acknowledged\u003c/a>. In testimony before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs on April 18, Tom Murphy, head of the VA’s Compensation Service, said claims adjusters at the VA Oakland office made mistakes on 26 percent of claims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The “audit throws into question (the) VA’s ability to honestly and accurately tell Congress how bad the situation in Oakland has deteriorated,” said Paul Sullivan, who serves as managing director of public affairs and veterans outreach for the Washington law firm Bergmann & Moore. Sullivan also testified at the hearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A VA spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request to comment for this story. In his written response to the report, the director of the Oakland office, Douglas Bragg, concurred with the inspector general’s findings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an e-mailed response to questions, Rep. Wally Herger, R-Marysville, said it was “appalling” that the inspector general found that the Oakland office failed to follow a department policy prescribing a monthly review of all claims older than one year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Herger, who met in March with VA Under Secretary for Benefits Allison Hickey to discuss the claims backlog, said he would “continue to closely monitor the situation to ensure our veterans receive timely service.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bragg and Willie Clark, the agency’s western regional director, have agreed to answer questions on the backlog from the California congressional delegation at a public event at San Francisco’s War Memorial Building on May 21.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Veterans with pending claims have also been invited to attend the meeting and speak about their experience with delays. According to Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, VA staff will be available to help resolve claims in a separate meeting room.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement responding to the inspector general’s report, Rep. McNerney, who sits on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, called the delays at the Oakland office “inexcusable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The delays and inaccuracies we have seen are disturbing,” he said. “The veterans who are being subjected to these problems cannot wait for another report from the IG to shed light on the issue. The VA needs to take steps now to right these wrongs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.va.gov/oig/pubs/VAOIG-12-00242-177.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">In a separate report [PDF]\u003c/a> also released today, the inspector general found the VA’s San Diego regional office made errors in 53 percent of the 79 claims sampled as part of its inspection. According to the VA, the San Diego office has a backlog of more than 30,000 claims, with 62.5 percent of veterans waiting more than four months for a decision:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With today’s release of VA’s Inspector General’s audits for San Diego and Oakland, a reasonable person can conclude nearly all of the Veterans Benefits Administration remains deeply mired in crisis, with little chance of recovery unless President Obama and Congress act immediately.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Aaron Glantz is an investigative journalist for \u003ca href=\"http://californiawatch.org/\">California Watch\u003c/a>\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>From AP: \u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65041\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/05/truvada.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/05/truvada.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"truvada\" width=\"300\" height=\"202\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65041\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bottles of antiretroviral drug Truvada are shown at Jack's Pharmacy on November 23, 2010 in San Anselmo, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A panel of federal health advisers has endorsed the first drug shown to prevent HIV infection in healthy people, clearing the way for a potentially landmark approval in the 30-year-old effort against the virus that causes AIDS.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a series of votes, the Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recommended approval of the daily pill Truvada for healthy people who are at high risk of contracting HIV, including gay and bisexual men and heterosexual couples with one HIV-infected person. The FDA is not required to follow the panel’s advice, though it usually does. A final decision is expected by June 15.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drugmaker Gilead Sciences Inc., of Foster City, already markets Truvada as a treatment for people who are infected with HIV.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Last July, I interviewed Dr. Paul Volberding, co-director of the Center for AIDS Research at the University of California, San Francisco, about the research into Truvada up to that time. He said results showed “the kind of effect we might expect from a very good vaccine.” We also discussed what populations might consider using Truvada as a prophylactic and whether giving healthy people a preventative drug might induce them to engage in riskier sexual activity. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2011/07/15/interview-new-studies-show-anti-hiv-drug-prevents-transmission/\">\u003cstrong>Read or listen to the interview here\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>From AP: \u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65041\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/05/truvada.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/05/truvada.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"truvada\" width=\"300\" height=\"202\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65041\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bottles of antiretroviral drug Truvada are shown at Jack's Pharmacy on November 23, 2010 in San Anselmo, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A panel of federal health advisers has endorsed the first drug shown to prevent HIV infection in healthy people, clearing the way for a potentially landmark approval in the 30-year-old effort against the virus that causes AIDS.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a series of votes, the Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recommended approval of the daily pill Truvada for healthy people who are at high risk of contracting HIV, including gay and bisexual men and heterosexual couples with one HIV-infected person. The FDA is not required to follow the panel’s advice, though it usually does. A final decision is expected by June 15.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drugmaker Gilead Sciences Inc., of Foster City, already markets Truvada as a treatment for people who are infected with HIV.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Last July, I interviewed Dr. Paul Volberding, co-director of the Center for AIDS Research at the University of California, San Francisco, about the research into Truvada up to that time. He said results showed “the kind of effect we might expect from a very good vaccine.” We also discussed what populations might consider using Truvada as a prophylactic and whether giving healthy people a preventative drug might induce them to engage in riskier sexual activity. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2011/07/15/interview-new-studies-show-anti-hiv-drug-prevents-transmission/\">\u003cstrong>Read or listen to the interview here\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Looks like Guillermo Mota’s a two-time loser in the ole performance enhancing substance game…\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>NEW YORK (AP) San Francisco Giants reliever Guillermo Mota has been given a 100-game suspension after testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Major League Baseball announced the penalty Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 38-year-old right-hander drew a 50-game suspension after the 2006 season for a performance-enhancing substance violation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mota was 0-1 with a 5.06 ERA in nine games for the Giants this year. This is his 14th season in the majors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The commissioner’s office said Mota tested positive for Clenbuterol.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Manny Ramirez was also suspended twice for testing positive for a banned substance. After the second time, he opted to retire, but he’s now serving a 50-game suspension while \u003ca href=\"http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/7594873/manny-ramirez-agrees-deal-oakland-as\">attempting a comeback with the A’s\u003c/a>. Neifi Perez, who played for the Giants and a lot of other teams, was \u003ca href=\"http://thesteroidera.blogspot.com/2007/08/neifi-perez-suspended-80-games-for.html\">suspended three times\u003c/a> for amphetamine use. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>(Bay City News) A laboratory at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center has been shut down following the weekend death of a researcher that was apparently caused by deadly bacteria he was working with, a VA official said today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researcher, identified by the medical examiner’s office as 25-year-old Richard Din, died Saturday morning after working all week with a rare strain of the bacterium meningococcus that has no available vaccine, said Dr. Harry Lampiris, chief of infectious disease at the San Francisco VA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Din’s research included growing the bacteria and isolating parts of it in the hopes of finding a vaccine, Lampiris said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After leaving work on Friday, Din apparently started feeling sick around 7 p.m. When his symptoms worsened Saturday, he was taken to the VA medical center where he died, according to Lampiris.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The disease caused by the bacteria has an incubation period of three to five days, which “makes us think he was probably exposed during the workweek,” Lampiris said. \u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a precaution, Din’s housemates and girlfriend and the five people working with him at the lab were given antibiotics to prevent them from getting the infection, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About 60 people who were involved in treating him at the medical center also received the antibiotics, Lampiris said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said employees at the center have been “profoundly devastated” by Din’s death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>VA officials held a town hall meeting on Monday for its employees to discuss the tragedy and to offer grief counseling. About 200 people showed up, Lampiris said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lab has been closed indefinitely while the VA investigates the incident, he said. The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration is also investigating Din’s death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lampiris said there were “no obvious malfunctions or laboratory spills” that may have led to Din becoming infected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re waiting for further guidance on what we might be able to do to prevent this from happening in the future,” he said. “Laboratory safety is always an ongoing concern, and I’m sure this will lead to some changes in our practices.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal/OSHA spokeswoman Erika Monterroza said Din was employed by the Northern California Institute for Research and Education, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing veterans’ health research that is based at the VA medical center at 4150 Clement St.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal/OSHA has six months to complete an investigation, and if any workplace violations are uncovered, the employer could face citations and fines, Monterroza said.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a precaution, Din’s housemates and girlfriend and the five people working with him at the lab were given antibiotics to prevent them from getting the infection, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About 60 people who were involved in treating him at the medical center also received the antibiotics, Lampiris said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said employees at the center have been “profoundly devastated” by Din’s death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>VA officials held a town hall meeting on Monday for its employees to discuss the tragedy and to offer grief counseling. About 200 people showed up, Lampiris said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lab has been closed indefinitely while the VA investigates the incident, he said. The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration is also investigating Din’s death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lampiris said there were “no obvious malfunctions or laboratory spills” that may have led to Din becoming infected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re waiting for further guidance on what we might be able to do to prevent this from happening in the future,” he said. “Laboratory safety is always an ongoing concern, and I’m sure this will lead to some changes in our practices.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal/OSHA spokeswoman Erika Monterroza said Din was employed by the Northern California Institute for Research and Education, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing veterans’ health research that is based at the VA medical center at 4150 Clement St.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal/OSHA has six months to complete an investigation, and if any workplace violations are uncovered, the employer could face citations and fines, Monterroza said.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Victim of Bacterial Meningitis at VA Lab Named; Lab Worked With Several Strains",
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"content": "\u003cp>The 25-year old lab worker who \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2012/05/02/lab-accident-at-san-francisco-va-leaves-man-dead-of-bacterial-meningitis/\">died on Saturday from a bacterial infection\u003c/a> has been \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/03/BAPQ1OD1UA.DTL\">identified\u003c/a> as Treasure Island resident Richard Din. Din died of a form of bacterial meningitis that he likely caught while working in a San Francisco VA lab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the VA, Din was working with Neisseria meningitidis serotype B, a particularly virulent strain of bacteria known to cause meningitis and blood infections. Unlike other strains of Neisseria meningitidis, serotype B does not respond to existing vaccines. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5837a4.htm\">CDC guidelines\u003c/a> state that lab workers working with any serotype of Neisseria meningitidis should be vaccinated. Other VA researchers were working with serotypes that do respond to vaccines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lampiris said the VA hasn’t determined whether any of the lab workers had received the vaccine, or even knew it was recommended. “I would say that people in the lab had not received information that there was a routine recommendation for vaccination,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Analysts at the CDC are working with samples from the lab as well as from the victim to confirm that Din’s death did, indeed, stem from workplace exposure. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is possible to catch meningococcal disease – the form of meningitis caused by Neisseria meningitides – outside of a lab. But laboratory-acquired cases have a much higher fatality rate than cases in the general population. According to the CDC, half of lab workers who are infected with meningococcal disease generally die from it, compared to a 12-15 percent fatality rate in the general population.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The 25-year old lab worker who \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2012/05/02/lab-accident-at-san-francisco-va-leaves-man-dead-of-bacterial-meningitis/\">died on Saturday from a bacterial infection\u003c/a> has been \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/03/BAPQ1OD1UA.DTL\">identified\u003c/a> as Treasure Island resident Richard Din. Din died of a form of bacterial meningitis that he likely caught while working in a San Francisco VA lab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the VA, Din was working with Neisseria meningitidis serotype B, a particularly virulent strain of bacteria known to cause meningitis and blood infections. Unlike other strains of Neisseria meningitidis, serotype B does not respond to existing vaccines. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5837a4.htm\">CDC guidelines\u003c/a> state that lab workers working with any serotype of Neisseria meningitidis should be vaccinated. Other VA researchers were working with serotypes that do respond to vaccines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lampiris said the VA hasn’t determined whether any of the lab workers had received the vaccine, or even knew it was recommended. “I would say that people in the lab had not received information that there was a routine recommendation for vaccination,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Analysts at the CDC are working with samples from the lab as well as from the victim to confirm that Din’s death did, indeed, stem from workplace exposure. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>A young lab assistant at the VA Medical Center in San Francisco died on Saturday after becoming infected with a deadly strain of bacterial meningitis that he had been working with in the lab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Officials at the VA wouldn’t release the man’s name, but said he was 25 years old and had been working at the lab since October, handling the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis for at least several weeks. (\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2012/05/02/lab-accident-at-san-francisco-va-leaves-man-dead-of-bacterial-meningitis/#update\">\u003cstrong>Update Thursday\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>: The man has now been identified as 25-year-old Richard Din of San Francisco.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harry Lampiris, Chief of Infectious Disease at the San Francisco VA and a professor of medicine at UCSF, said the man began complaining of a headache and nausea on Friday evening. The next morning, his symptoms worsened, and he developed a full body rash. The man asked his friends to take him to the hospital but became unresponsive in the car and arrived at the VA around noon without a pulse. He was briefly revived, but died of a heart attack soon after. His death came just 17 hours after the first symptoms had appeared.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Had he called an ambulance and received medical attention sooner, said Lampiris, he might have survived. “I don’t think anyone had any concept as to how sick he was.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Investigators still haven’t determined how the man became infected with the bacteria, or when the infection occurred. The typical incubation period for meningococcus, the disease caused by the Neisseria meningitidis bacterium, is 3-5 days, but can be as long as eight days, said Lampiris. The man had been handling the bacterium all week. Typically, infection occurs through inhalation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lampiris said San Francisco VA lab workers were accustomed to handling the deadly bacteria, and had been doing so for 25 years. He said researchers followed standard CDC protocol, wearing gowns and gloves and working under a device known as a hood, designed to pull air – and potential contaminants – away from the researcher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researcher, said Lampiris, “was working in a lab that was highly experienced with dealing with these organisms.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still it was unclear whether the lab had followed all CDC recommendations for worker safety. According to CDC spokeswoman Alison Patti, “researchers working with Neisseria meningitidis should be vaccinated with meningococcal conjugate vaccine,” with revaccinations occurring every five years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lampiris said the VA hasn’t determined whether any of the lab workers had received the vaccine, or even knew it was recommended. “I would say that people in the lab had not received information that there was a routine recommendation for vaccination,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, Lampiris added, the vaccine might not have saved the man, because this particular strain of Neisseria meningitidis, serotype B, is resistant to existing vaccines. “No vaccine would have prevented it,” said Lampiris.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neisseria meningitidis outbreaks are rare in the US. According to \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/abcs/reports-findings/survreports/mening10.html\">the CDC\u003c/a>, 75 people died from this particular form of meningitis in 2010. Exposures from laboratories are much rarer. The authors of a \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1234112/\">2005 research paper\u003c/a> cited by the CDC found that only 16 cases of laboratory-acquired infection were reported worldwide between 1985-2001, including six cases in the US. Eight of those 16 cases were fatal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meningococcus can be prevented with antibiotics if it’s caught before the bacteria take root in the body and symptoms begin to appear. According to the Lampiris, six of the man’s personal contacts have received antibiotics, as well as 60 VA employees. None have shown symptoms, said Lampiris. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lampiris says the VA lab has been closed temporarily and the case is under investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency that oversees workplace safety issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the San Francisco VA, a town hall meeting was held on Monday to inform the community about what happened, and to offer grief-counseling services. “We’re devastated by the loss of one of our own researchers,” said Lampiris. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca name=\"update\">\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Update Thursday, May 3\u003c/strong>: According to Dr. Harry Lampiris of the VA, unvaccinated researchers at the lab had been working with several strains of Neisseria meningitidis, including serotype B, the strain believed to have killed the researcher now \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/03/BAPQ1OD1UA.DTL\">identified\u003c/a> as Richard Din, 25, of San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This appears to be a violation of CDC guidelines, which specify that lab workers handling any type of Neisseria should be vaccinated, even though the vaccine is ineffective against serotype B. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, analysts at the CDC are working with samples from the lab as well as from the victim to confirm his disease did, indeed, stem from workplace exposure. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is possible to catch Meningococcal disease – the form of meningitis caused by Neisseria meningitides – outside of a lab. But laboratory-acquired cases have a much higher fatality rate than cases in the general population. According to the CDC, half of lab workers who are infected with meningococcal disease generally die from it, compared to a 12-15 percent fatality rate in the general population.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Lab Accident at San Francisco VA Leaves Man Dead of Bacterial Meningitis | KQED",
"description": "A young lab assistant at the VA Medical Center in San Francisco died on Saturday after becoming infected with a deadly strain of bacterial meningitis that he had been working with in the lab. Officials at the VA wouldn't release the man's name, but said he was 25 years old and had been working at the lab since October, handling the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis for at least several weeks. (Update Thursday: The man has now been identified as 25-year-old Richard Din of San Francisco.) Harry Lampiris, Chief of Infectious Disease at the San Francisco VA and a professor of medicine",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A young lab assistant at the VA Medical Center in San Francisco died on Saturday after becoming infected with a deadly strain of bacterial meningitis that he had been working with in the lab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Officials at the VA wouldn’t release the man’s name, but said he was 25 years old and had been working at the lab since October, handling the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis for at least several weeks. (\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2012/05/02/lab-accident-at-san-francisco-va-leaves-man-dead-of-bacterial-meningitis/#update\">\u003cstrong>Update Thursday\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>: The man has now been identified as 25-year-old Richard Din of San Francisco.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harry Lampiris, Chief of Infectious Disease at the San Francisco VA and a professor of medicine at UCSF, said the man began complaining of a headache and nausea on Friday evening. The next morning, his symptoms worsened, and he developed a full body rash. The man asked his friends to take him to the hospital but became unresponsive in the car and arrived at the VA around noon without a pulse. He was briefly revived, but died of a heart attack soon after. His death came just 17 hours after the first symptoms had appeared.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Had he called an ambulance and received medical attention sooner, said Lampiris, he might have survived. “I don’t think anyone had any concept as to how sick he was.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Investigators still haven’t determined how the man became infected with the bacteria, or when the infection occurred. The typical incubation period for meningococcus, the disease caused by the Neisseria meningitidis bacterium, is 3-5 days, but can be as long as eight days, said Lampiris. The man had been handling the bacterium all week. Typically, infection occurs through inhalation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lampiris said San Francisco VA lab workers were accustomed to handling the deadly bacteria, and had been doing so for 25 years. He said researchers followed standard CDC protocol, wearing gowns and gloves and working under a device known as a hood, designed to pull air – and potential contaminants – away from the researcher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researcher, said Lampiris, “was working in a lab that was highly experienced with dealing with these organisms.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still it was unclear whether the lab had followed all CDC recommendations for worker safety. According to CDC spokeswoman Alison Patti, “researchers working with Neisseria meningitidis should be vaccinated with meningococcal conjugate vaccine,” with revaccinations occurring every five years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lampiris said the VA hasn’t determined whether any of the lab workers had received the vaccine, or even knew it was recommended. “I would say that people in the lab had not received information that there was a routine recommendation for vaccination,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, Lampiris added, the vaccine might not have saved the man, because this particular strain of Neisseria meningitidis, serotype B, is resistant to existing vaccines. “No vaccine would have prevented it,” said Lampiris.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neisseria meningitidis outbreaks are rare in the US. According to \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/abcs/reports-findings/survreports/mening10.html\">the CDC\u003c/a>, 75 people died from this particular form of meningitis in 2010. Exposures from laboratories are much rarer. The authors of a \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1234112/\">2005 research paper\u003c/a> cited by the CDC found that only 16 cases of laboratory-acquired infection were reported worldwide between 1985-2001, including six cases in the US. Eight of those 16 cases were fatal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meningococcus can be prevented with antibiotics if it’s caught before the bacteria take root in the body and symptoms begin to appear. According to the Lampiris, six of the man’s personal contacts have received antibiotics, as well as 60 VA employees. None have shown symptoms, said Lampiris. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lampiris says the VA lab has been closed temporarily and the case is under investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency that oversees workplace safety issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the San Francisco VA, a town hall meeting was held on Monday to inform the community about what happened, and to offer grief-counseling services. “We’re devastated by the loss of one of our own researchers,” said Lampiris. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca name=\"update\">\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Update Thursday, May 3\u003c/strong>: According to Dr. Harry Lampiris of the VA, unvaccinated researchers at the lab had been working with several strains of Neisseria meningitidis, including serotype B, the strain believed to have killed the researcher now \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/03/BAPQ1OD1UA.DTL\">identified\u003c/a> as Richard Din, 25, of San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This appears to be a violation of CDC guidelines, which specify that lab workers handling any type of Neisseria should be vaccinated, even though the vaccine is ineffective against serotype B. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, analysts at the CDC are working with samples from the lab as well as from the victim to confirm his disease did, indeed, stem from workplace exposure. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is possible to catch Meningococcal disease – the form of meningitis caused by Neisseria meningitides – outside of a lab. But laboratory-acquired cases have a much higher fatality rate than cases in the general population. According to the CDC, half of lab workers who are infected with meningococcal disease generally die from it, compared to a 12-15 percent fatality rate in the general population.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "berkeley-pot-dispensary-biggest-casualty-of-crackdown",
"title": "Berkeley Pot Dispensary Biggest Casualty of Crackdown",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cstrong>by David Downs and Michael Montgomery, \u003ca href=\"http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/berkeley-pot-dispensary-biggest-casualty-federal-crackdown-15994\">California Watch\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With its only retail outlet due to close Monday, Berkeley Patients Group is set to become the biggest casualty so far in a bold and controversial legal offensive by federal prosecutors against California’s pot industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group sent an e-mail to customers earlier today announcing the pending closure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63953\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 254px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/05/berkpatientsgroups.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-63953\" title=\"berkpatientsgroups\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/05/berkpatientsgroups.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"254\" height=\"298\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michael Montgomery/California Watch\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While dozens of other medical marijuana dispensaries around the state have been forced to shut down since California’s four U.S. attorneys launched the crackdown in October, none is as large or commands the same local political support as Berkeley Patients Group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Late last year, Melinda Haag, U.S. attorney for Northern California, warned the group’s landlord, David Mayeri, that the government would seize his assets if marijuana continued to be distributed at the property. The letter cited violations of federal law and the outlet’s 1,000-foot proximity to two schools. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Marijuana dispensaries are full of cash and they’re full of marijuana, and everybody knows that,” Haag said \u003ca href=\"http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/prominent-berkeley-marijuana-dispensary-close-shop-15320\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in an interview in March.\u003c/a> “They are at risk of being robbed, and many of them are robbed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haag said another dispensary being targeted for closure was located next to a preschool in Santa Cruz. In February, armed gunmen robbed the facility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Berkeley Patients Group supporters, including neighboring businesses, contend the facility has operated safely for 12 years and has never been the scene of a serious crime. \u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group’s owners declined interview requests. But in written responses today, they said closing the current site “would deprive many patients safe access to their medicine and be particularly difficult for the hundreds of low income patients who rely on BPG for free medical cannabis and holistic health services. This is an outcome that we have been working very hard to prevent.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under a legal agreement with Mayeri, Berkeley Patients Group must cease operations at its location tomorrow and vacate the premises by June 1.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Medical marijuana activists have denounced efforts to close the facility. They’ve also condemned a recent raid by federal agents on nearby Oaksterdam University, a medical marijuana training school that has been dubbed the “Princeton of pot.” With federal indictments possible in that case, owner Richard Lee announced he’s stepping down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Berkeley Patients Group representatives declined to say whether they have secured a new location for their dispensary. But real estate experts said the federal crackdown has left property owners nervous about renting to medical marijuana establishments, even if they have permits from local authorities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s almost impossible to relocate, especially under the rules and regulations that the cities and state have in place right now,” said Adam Peterson, a real estate agent for Cassidy Turley BT Commercial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even if the dispensary reopens, other challenges remain, including a whopping tax bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to a 2011 state \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/346718-c-berkeley-patients-group-inc-sum.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">audit\u003c/a>, Berkeley Patients Group owes $6.4 million to the California State Board of Equalization for its failure to pay sales taxes from 2004 to 2007. Officials have said they are paying off the debt in monthly installments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group has also been embroiled in bitter legal battles with two former employees – the group’s co-founder and a senior manager.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of the dispute stems from the group’s decision – at the peak of California’s pot boom three years ago – to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in four dispensaries in Maine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginning in 2009, Berkeley Patients Group helped create a sister business, Northeast Patients Group, which eventually won permits for the dispensaries. The group projected annual revenues of more than $22 million, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/347384-npg-package.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">documents\u003c/a> submitted to Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Court \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/347383-bpg-npg-complaint.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">documents\u003c/a> from Maine show Berkeley executives pumped more than $600,000 in loans, services and other expenses into the enterprise, which was headed by a former manager and modeled on the group’s operations in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the collaboration went sour. Last year, Berkeley Patients Group filed a lawsuit against the former employee, Rebecca DeKeuster, and Northeast Patients Group, alleging they sold trade secrets to a competitor and failed to repay the loans. The case is still in litigation. Since then, DeKeuster opened three dispensaries in Maine, but Berkeley Patients Group has ended its involvement in the project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a written statement, the group’s executives said they decided to establish the business in Maine because they wanted to help set up the nation’s first state-run dispensary system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The decision to work in Maine was not taken lightly, but it was a unanimous decision by our Board,” the statement read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But two former employees criticized the way the group went about the expansion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doug McVay, Berkeley Patients Group’s bookkeeper in 2009 and 2010, said the decision to invest in out-of-state dispensaries was “ill-conceived and over-ambitious at best,” leaving the organization financially vulnerable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Funds went out without a clear understanding of whether they were for a loan, an investment or something different, and those designations would change over time,” he said in an e-mail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Deborah Goldsberry, a co-founder who left Berkeley Patients Group last year, alleged money for the Maine project was pulled from a special trust account set aside to cover the group’s state tax obligations, according to a wrongful termination \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/346717-bpg-complaint.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">complaint\u003c/a> filed in Alameda County Superior Court in November.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Goldsberry declined to comment on the complaint, which was settled in January. In a statement, Berkeley Patients Group denied “using any money set aside for taxes to fund the work in Maine” and said the complaint “was never served and any matters have been resolved to the parties’ mutual satisfaction.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Company business documents show money for the Maine expansion came from internal reserves as well as a loan from the group’s landlord, Mayeri. The documents do not show the group drew funds from a special tax account.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McVay, Berkeley Patients Group’s former bookkeeper, said the dispute over the Maine project was connected to other financial arrangements, including a deal in which current CEO Tim Schick and Goldsberry purchased a property adjacent to the dispensary. Berkeley Patients Group provided the down payment and covered monthly mortgage installments, according to McVay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At the time … we never had a signed agreement on file – no interest, no repayment plan, no terms, nothing,” he said. “The paperwork was minimal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a written statement, Berkeley Patients Group said the property was purchased by Goldsberry and Schick in 2009 “in anticipation that BPG would expand physically at that location. Clearly those plans have changed, and what will be done with that additional space has yet to be decided.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some prominent players in the Bay Area’s medical marijuana industry said the acrimony was fueled by a clash between Berkeley Patients Group’s “hippie” roots and the need to operate an increasingly sophisticated business amid murky laws and zealous federal law enforcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a very different organization back then,” said Mickey Martin, an Oakland-based dispensary consultant, referring to the founding of the group after Californians legalized medical marijuana in 1996. “Very hippie-rooted. They tried to run it like a family organization.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2003, SB 420 provided legal cover for medical marijuana outlets. Six years later, the medical marijuana retail business was booming across California. Operating with a city permit, Berkeley Patients Group was serving thousands of customers a month with $19 million in annual revenues, according to interviews and Internet postings by company managers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group also cultivated a community-friendly reputation, donating thousands of dollars to local groups ranging from a special school for hearing-impaired children to the local chamber of commerce. In 2009, the Berkeley City Council declared “Berkeley Patients Group Day,” lauding the dispensary for its tax revenue, donations, sponsorships and “living wages.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that same year, Berkeley Patients Group started to move away from its hippie roots, according to Martin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Martin said the group’s push into new business ventures was spurred in part by competition. In 2010, Steve DeAngelo – owner of Harborside Health Center in Oakland, another large dispensary – founded “CannBe” to export marijuana-related business opportunities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CannBe offered the services of a legalization “A-team” that would work to pass local medical marijuana regulations and win coveted distribution permits for clients around the country. A CannBe internal sales brochure dated October 2010 lists consulting fees of $270,000 for each signed contract plus an additional $5.15 charge for every customer transaction, payable monthly for at least 10 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DeAngelo said the document was similar to a franchise agreement but that actual deals were for “significantly” less money. CannBe folded last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a bill to tightly regulate medical marijuana is debated in Sacramento, Henry Wykowski, a finance expert who advises dispensaries, said more rules could mean fewer disputes of the kind that Berkeley Patients Group and other operators have experienced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t think that more regulation would be bad for the industry. The guidelines are gray and when they’re gray that can lead to all sorts of problems,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported in collaboration with KQED public radio.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Berkeley Pot Dispensary Biggest Casualty of Crackdown | KQED",
"description": "by David Downs and Michael Montgomery, California Watch With its only retail outlet due to close Monday, Berkeley Patients Group is set to become the biggest casualty so far in a bold and controversial legal offensive by federal prosecutors against California’s pot industry. The group sent an e-mail to customers earlier today announcing the pending closure. While dozens of other medical marijuana dispensaries around the state have been forced to shut down since California’s four U.S. attorneys launched the crackdown in October, none is as large or commands the same local political support as Berkeley Patients Group. Late last year,",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>by David Downs and Michael Montgomery, \u003ca href=\"http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/berkeley-pot-dispensary-biggest-casualty-federal-crackdown-15994\">California Watch\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With its only retail outlet due to close Monday, Berkeley Patients Group is set to become the biggest casualty so far in a bold and controversial legal offensive by federal prosecutors against California’s pot industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group sent an e-mail to customers earlier today announcing the pending closure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63953\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 254px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/05/berkpatientsgroups.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-63953\" title=\"berkpatientsgroups\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/05/berkpatientsgroups.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"254\" height=\"298\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michael Montgomery/California Watch\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While dozens of other medical marijuana dispensaries around the state have been forced to shut down since California’s four U.S. attorneys launched the crackdown in October, none is as large or commands the same local political support as Berkeley Patients Group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Late last year, Melinda Haag, U.S. attorney for Northern California, warned the group’s landlord, David Mayeri, that the government would seize his assets if marijuana continued to be distributed at the property. The letter cited violations of federal law and the outlet’s 1,000-foot proximity to two schools. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Marijuana dispensaries are full of cash and they’re full of marijuana, and everybody knows that,” Haag said \u003ca href=\"http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/prominent-berkeley-marijuana-dispensary-close-shop-15320\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in an interview in March.\u003c/a> “They are at risk of being robbed, and many of them are robbed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haag said another dispensary being targeted for closure was located next to a preschool in Santa Cruz. In February, armed gunmen robbed the facility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Berkeley Patients Group supporters, including neighboring businesses, contend the facility has operated safely for 12 years and has never been the scene of a serious crime. \u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group’s owners declined interview requests. But in written responses today, they said closing the current site “would deprive many patients safe access to their medicine and be particularly difficult for the hundreds of low income patients who rely on BPG for free medical cannabis and holistic health services. This is an outcome that we have been working very hard to prevent.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under a legal agreement with Mayeri, Berkeley Patients Group must cease operations at its location tomorrow and vacate the premises by June 1.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Medical marijuana activists have denounced efforts to close the facility. They’ve also condemned a recent raid by federal agents on nearby Oaksterdam University, a medical marijuana training school that has been dubbed the “Princeton of pot.” With federal indictments possible in that case, owner Richard Lee announced he’s stepping down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Berkeley Patients Group representatives declined to say whether they have secured a new location for their dispensary. But real estate experts said the federal crackdown has left property owners nervous about renting to medical marijuana establishments, even if they have permits from local authorities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s almost impossible to relocate, especially under the rules and regulations that the cities and state have in place right now,” said Adam Peterson, a real estate agent for Cassidy Turley BT Commercial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even if the dispensary reopens, other challenges remain, including a whopping tax bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to a 2011 state \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/346718-c-berkeley-patients-group-inc-sum.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">audit\u003c/a>, Berkeley Patients Group owes $6.4 million to the California State Board of Equalization for its failure to pay sales taxes from 2004 to 2007. Officials have said they are paying off the debt in monthly installments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group has also been embroiled in bitter legal battles with two former employees – the group’s co-founder and a senior manager.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of the dispute stems from the group’s decision – at the peak of California’s pot boom three years ago – to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in four dispensaries in Maine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginning in 2009, Berkeley Patients Group helped create a sister business, Northeast Patients Group, which eventually won permits for the dispensaries. The group projected annual revenues of more than $22 million, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/347384-npg-package.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">documents\u003c/a> submitted to Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Court \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/347383-bpg-npg-complaint.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">documents\u003c/a> from Maine show Berkeley executives pumped more than $600,000 in loans, services and other expenses into the enterprise, which was headed by a former manager and modeled on the group’s operations in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the collaboration went sour. Last year, Berkeley Patients Group filed a lawsuit against the former employee, Rebecca DeKeuster, and Northeast Patients Group, alleging they sold trade secrets to a competitor and failed to repay the loans. The case is still in litigation. Since then, DeKeuster opened three dispensaries in Maine, but Berkeley Patients Group has ended its involvement in the project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a written statement, the group’s executives said they decided to establish the business in Maine because they wanted to help set up the nation’s first state-run dispensary system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The decision to work in Maine was not taken lightly, but it was a unanimous decision by our Board,” the statement read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But two former employees criticized the way the group went about the expansion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doug McVay, Berkeley Patients Group’s bookkeeper in 2009 and 2010, said the decision to invest in out-of-state dispensaries was “ill-conceived and over-ambitious at best,” leaving the organization financially vulnerable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Funds went out without a clear understanding of whether they were for a loan, an investment or something different, and those designations would change over time,” he said in an e-mail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Deborah Goldsberry, a co-founder who left Berkeley Patients Group last year, alleged money for the Maine project was pulled from a special trust account set aside to cover the group’s state tax obligations, according to a wrongful termination \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/346717-bpg-complaint.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">complaint\u003c/a> filed in Alameda County Superior Court in November.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Goldsberry declined to comment on the complaint, which was settled in January. In a statement, Berkeley Patients Group denied “using any money set aside for taxes to fund the work in Maine” and said the complaint “was never served and any matters have been resolved to the parties’ mutual satisfaction.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Company business documents show money for the Maine expansion came from internal reserves as well as a loan from the group’s landlord, Mayeri. The documents do not show the group drew funds from a special tax account.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McVay, Berkeley Patients Group’s former bookkeeper, said the dispute over the Maine project was connected to other financial arrangements, including a deal in which current CEO Tim Schick and Goldsberry purchased a property adjacent to the dispensary. Berkeley Patients Group provided the down payment and covered monthly mortgage installments, according to McVay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At the time … we never had a signed agreement on file – no interest, no repayment plan, no terms, nothing,” he said. “The paperwork was minimal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a written statement, Berkeley Patients Group said the property was purchased by Goldsberry and Schick in 2009 “in anticipation that BPG would expand physically at that location. Clearly those plans have changed, and what will be done with that additional space has yet to be decided.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some prominent players in the Bay Area’s medical marijuana industry said the acrimony was fueled by a clash between Berkeley Patients Group’s “hippie” roots and the need to operate an increasingly sophisticated business amid murky laws and zealous federal law enforcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a very different organization back then,” said Mickey Martin, an Oakland-based dispensary consultant, referring to the founding of the group after Californians legalized medical marijuana in 1996. “Very hippie-rooted. They tried to run it like a family organization.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2003, SB 420 provided legal cover for medical marijuana outlets. Six years later, the medical marijuana retail business was booming across California. Operating with a city permit, Berkeley Patients Group was serving thousands of customers a month with $19 million in annual revenues, according to interviews and Internet postings by company managers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group also cultivated a community-friendly reputation, donating thousands of dollars to local groups ranging from a special school for hearing-impaired children to the local chamber of commerce. In 2009, the Berkeley City Council declared “Berkeley Patients Group Day,” lauding the dispensary for its tax revenue, donations, sponsorships and “living wages.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that same year, Berkeley Patients Group started to move away from its hippie roots, according to Martin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Martin said the group’s push into new business ventures was spurred in part by competition. In 2010, Steve DeAngelo – owner of Harborside Health Center in Oakland, another large dispensary – founded “CannBe” to export marijuana-related business opportunities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CannBe offered the services of a legalization “A-team” that would work to pass local medical marijuana regulations and win coveted distribution permits for clients around the country. A CannBe internal sales brochure dated October 2010 lists consulting fees of $270,000 for each signed contract plus an additional $5.15 charge for every customer transaction, payable monthly for at least 10 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DeAngelo said the document was similar to a franchise agreement but that actual deals were for “significantly” less money. CannBe folded last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a bill to tightly regulate medical marijuana is debated in Sacramento, Henry Wykowski, a finance expert who advises dispensaries, said more rules could mean fewer disputes of the kind that Berkeley Patients Group and other operators have experienced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t think that more regulation would be bad for the industry. The guidelines are gray and when they’re gray that can lead to all sorts of problems,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported in collaboration with KQED public radio.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63639\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 115px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/04/MedicalMarijuanaJustinSullivanGetty.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-63639\" title=\"An Initiative To Legalize Marijuana In California To Appear On Nov. Ballot\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/04/MedicalMarijuanaJustinSullivanGetty-300x204.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"115\" height=\"80\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Justin Sullivan/Getty\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As first blogged by \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/san-francisco/\">The Huffington Post\u003c/a>, Barack Obama’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/ready-for-the-fight-rolling-stone-interview-with-barack-obama-20120425\">\u003cstrong>interview in Rolling Stone\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>, posted yesterday, includes the president answering a question on a topic that’s been the subject of frequent headlines around California recently: the months-long federal crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries and growers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s the question and Obama’s answer, from the magazine:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Let me ask you about the War on Drugs. You vowed in 2008, when you were running for election, that you would not “use Justice Department resources to try and circumvent state laws about medical marijuana.” Yet we just ran a \u003ca href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obamas-war-on-pot-20120216\">story that shows your administration is launching more raids on medical pot than the Bush administration did\u003c/a>. What’s up with that?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s what’s up: What I specifically said was that we were not going to prioritize prosecutions of persons who are using medical marijuana. I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana – and the reason is, because it’s against federal law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I can’t nullify congressional law. I can’t ask the Justice Department to say, “Ignore completely a federal law that’s on the books.” What I can say is, “Use your prosecutorial discretion and properly prioritize your resources to go after things that are really doing folks damage.” As a consequence, there haven’t been prosecutions of users of marijuana for medical purposes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The only tension that’s come up – and this gets hyped up a lot – is a murky area where you have large-scale, commercial operations that may supply medical marijuana users, but in some cases may also be supplying recreational users. In that situation, we put the Justice Department in a very difficult place if we’re telling them, “This is supposed to be against the law, but we want you to turn the other way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s not something we’re going to do. I do think it’s important and useful to have a broader debate about our drug laws. One of the things we’ve done over the past three years was to make a sensible change when it came to the disparity in sentencing between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. We’ve had a discussion about how to focus on treatment, taking a public-health approach to drugs and lessening the overwhelming emphasis on criminal laws as a tool to deal with this issue. I think that’s an appropriate debate that we should have.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>If that reasoning sounds familiar to followers of this issue, it may be because it’s similar to that expressed in comments made by Melinda Haag, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, who \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2011/10/07/california-u-s-attorneys-issue-statement-on-targeting-marijuana-industry/\">announced with her colleagues last October\u003c/a> that they would be targeting medical marijuana dispensaries and growers, plus their landlords. The prosecutors have been true to their words; that’s exactly \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/tag/medical-marijuana/\">what’s happened\u003c/a> and is \u003ca href=\"http://www.marinij.com/novato/ci_20481413/feds-target-novato-pot-dispensaries-one-closes\">continuing\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In March, KQED’s Michael Montgomery sat down with Haag, who for the first time \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2012/03/15/interview-w-us-attorney-haag-on-pot-operations-if-its-close-to-children-thats-a-line-were-going-to-draw/\">explained her rationale for the amped up enforcement\u003c/a>. Some of her language echoes Obama’s in the Rolling Stone inteview…or vice-versa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>The reason that the four California U.S. Attorneys announced our efforts together is that we were all experiencing the same thing, which is that everyone was saying we were hearing and everyone was saying the U.S. attorneys are not going to take any actions with respect to marijuana in California because of the 2009 \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.usdoj.gov/blog/archives/192\">Ogden memo\u003c/a>. [\u003cem>Note: The 2009 memo written by Deputy Attorney General David Ogden that laid out enforcement guidelines for federal prosecutors in regard to medical marijuana\u003c/em>.] So it’s fair game. We can have grow operations, we can have dispensaries, we can do anything we want with respect to marijuana because the Department of Justice in 2009 in the Ogden memo said that the California U.S. attorneys will not take action.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was incorrect. And we felt that we needed to send a message that it wasn’t correct. I actually felt that it was more fair to send a message because, for example, I was hearing from Oakland that it was going to issue licenses and allow large-scale grow operations in warehouses. And what was described to me was that they were going to be quote “Walmart-sized.” And I was hearing that everyone believed that would be okay and that my office would not take any action. And I knew it isn’t okay, it is a violation of federal law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you’re talking about that scale grow-operation across the bay in Oakland it wouldn’t be something that I could ignore. I didn’t think it was fair to stand by, be silent, let people pull licenses in Oakland, put millions of dollars into setting up a grow operation in a warehouse and then come in and take an enforcement action.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Earlier this month, lawmakers from Colorado, Maine, Washington, New Mexico and California — including Assemblymember Tom Ammiano of San Francisco — \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/02/lawmakers-in-5-states-tell-feds-medical-marijuana_n_1397811.html\">wrote an open letter\u003c/a> calling on the federal government “not to interfere with our ability to control and regulate how medical marijuana is grown and distributed. Let us seek clarity rather than chaos. Don’t force patients underground, to fuel the illegal drug market.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63639\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 115px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/04/MedicalMarijuanaJustinSullivanGetty.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-63639\" title=\"An Initiative To Legalize Marijuana In California To Appear On Nov. Ballot\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/04/MedicalMarijuanaJustinSullivanGetty-300x204.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"115\" height=\"80\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Justin Sullivan/Getty\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As first blogged by \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/san-francisco/\">The Huffington Post\u003c/a>, Barack Obama’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/ready-for-the-fight-rolling-stone-interview-with-barack-obama-20120425\">\u003cstrong>interview in Rolling Stone\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>, posted yesterday, includes the president answering a question on a topic that’s been the subject of frequent headlines around California recently: the months-long federal crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries and growers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s the question and Obama’s answer, from the magazine:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Let me ask you about the War on Drugs. You vowed in 2008, when you were running for election, that you would not “use Justice Department resources to try and circumvent state laws about medical marijuana.” Yet we just ran a \u003ca href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obamas-war-on-pot-20120216\">story that shows your administration is launching more raids on medical pot than the Bush administration did\u003c/a>. What’s up with that?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s what’s up: What I specifically said was that we were not going to prioritize prosecutions of persons who are using medical marijuana. I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana – and the reason is, because it’s against federal law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I can’t nullify congressional law. I can’t ask the Justice Department to say, “Ignore completely a federal law that’s on the books.” What I can say is, “Use your prosecutorial discretion and properly prioritize your resources to go after things that are really doing folks damage.” As a consequence, there haven’t been prosecutions of users of marijuana for medical purposes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The only tension that’s come up – and this gets hyped up a lot – is a murky area where you have large-scale, commercial operations that may supply medical marijuana users, but in some cases may also be supplying recreational users. In that situation, we put the Justice Department in a very difficult place if we’re telling them, “This is supposed to be against the law, but we want you to turn the other way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s not something we’re going to do. I do think it’s important and useful to have a broader debate about our drug laws. One of the things we’ve done over the past three years was to make a sensible change when it came to the disparity in sentencing between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. We’ve had a discussion about how to focus on treatment, taking a public-health approach to drugs and lessening the overwhelming emphasis on criminal laws as a tool to deal with this issue. I think that’s an appropriate debate that we should have.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>If that reasoning sounds familiar to followers of this issue, it may be because it’s similar to that expressed in comments made by Melinda Haag, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, who \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2011/10/07/california-u-s-attorneys-issue-statement-on-targeting-marijuana-industry/\">announced with her colleagues last October\u003c/a> that they would be targeting medical marijuana dispensaries and growers, plus their landlords. The prosecutors have been true to their words; that’s exactly \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/tag/medical-marijuana/\">what’s happened\u003c/a> and is \u003ca href=\"http://www.marinij.com/novato/ci_20481413/feds-target-novato-pot-dispensaries-one-closes\">continuing\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In March, KQED’s Michael Montgomery sat down with Haag, who for the first time \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2012/03/15/interview-w-us-attorney-haag-on-pot-operations-if-its-close-to-children-thats-a-line-were-going-to-draw/\">explained her rationale for the amped up enforcement\u003c/a>. Some of her language echoes Obama’s in the Rolling Stone inteview…or vice-versa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>The reason that the four California U.S. Attorneys announced our efforts together is that we were all experiencing the same thing, which is that everyone was saying we were hearing and everyone was saying the U.S. attorneys are not going to take any actions with respect to marijuana in California because of the 2009 \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.usdoj.gov/blog/archives/192\">Ogden memo\u003c/a>. [\u003cem>Note: The 2009 memo written by Deputy Attorney General David Ogden that laid out enforcement guidelines for federal prosecutors in regard to medical marijuana\u003c/em>.] So it’s fair game. We can have grow operations, we can have dispensaries, we can do anything we want with respect to marijuana because the Department of Justice in 2009 in the Ogden memo said that the California U.S. attorneys will not take action.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was incorrect. And we felt that we needed to send a message that it wasn’t correct. I actually felt that it was more fair to send a message because, for example, I was hearing from Oakland that it was going to issue licenses and allow large-scale grow operations in warehouses. And what was described to me was that they were going to be quote “Walmart-sized.” And I was hearing that everyone believed that would be okay and that my office would not take any action. And I knew it isn’t okay, it is a violation of federal law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you’re talking about that scale grow-operation across the bay in Oakland it wouldn’t be something that I could ignore. I didn’t think it was fair to stand by, be silent, let people pull licenses in Oakland, put millions of dollars into setting up a grow operation in a warehouse and then come in and take an enforcement action.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Earlier this month, lawmakers from Colorado, Maine, Washington, New Mexico and California — including Assemblymember Tom Ammiano of San Francisco — \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/02/lawmakers-in-5-states-tell-feds-medical-marijuana_n_1397811.html\">wrote an open letter\u003c/a> calling on the federal government “not to interfere with our ability to control and regulate how medical marijuana is grown and distributed. Let us seek clarity rather than chaos. Don’t force patients underground, to fuel the illegal drug market.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63564\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 250px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/04/beef_cattle_grazing_usda4.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-63564\" title=\"beef_cattle_grazing_usda\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/04/beef_cattle_grazing_usda4.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"164\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: USDA\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The discovery of the first case of mad cow disease in California and just the fourth in the U.S. has \u003ca href=\"http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201204260850/a\">sparked a conversation over whether the nation’s food safety protocols are working — or not\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yesterday on KQED Public Radio’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201204250900\">Forum program\u003c/a>, a discussion on the case with:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Jere Dick, veterinarian and associate deputy administrator with USDA Veterinary Services\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Michael K. Hansen, senior scientist at Consumer’s Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Tom Talbot, chairman of the Animal Health and Well Being Committee at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, veterinarian and California beef producer\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201204250900\">Listen to the segment\u003c/a> or read the edited transcript below…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Transcript\u003c/em>:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>HOST MICHAEL KRASNY\u003c/strong>: The USDA has confirmed, as a result of random sampling, a case of mad cow disease in a dairy cow in Hanford, California near Fresno. Agriculture officials say meat eaters are not at risk because it’s an atypical case, since the affected cow was not intended for the food supply and the disease cannot be transmitted by milk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the brain-wasting disease can be fatal to cattle and fatal to humans eating tainted meat. We discuss Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and other issues facing the beef industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Joining us from Washington, D.C. is Dr. Jerry Dick, who is a veterinarian, Associate Deputy Administrator with USDA Veterinary Services. And also glad to have Dr. Michael K. Hansen, who’s a PhD senior scientist with the Consume’s Union, a nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports. And we’ll also be joined by Tom Talbot from the National Cattleman’s Beef Association.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let me begin, Dr. Dick. with you, just by talking about most of the reports coming in saying that this shows how effective testing procedures are for BSE, but some criticism is saying that it’s kind of lucky and random you found this cow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: Actually we have a very extensive surveillance program in place, where we continually sample animals from several surveillance streams in order for us to be able to detect this disease all the time. We’ve been doing that for a number of years and every year we take about 40,000 samples to our laboratories on a randomized basis to continue to stay on the outlook for the disease. \u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: That’s a detection level of about one case for every million cattle. I know it exceeds the World Health Organization but 40,000 tested each year is, well, not enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: That’s about 10 times the OIE standard. We believe strongly that it is a very high level of sampling in this country, especially with the history we’ve had – we haven’t found but three cases, one of which was an imported case which we found in the Northwest about ten years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So we believe it’s a good sampling system, it provides us with a great level of confidence to find the disease if it’s present.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Do we know where this particular cow, where the disease came from with this cow? How the cow got this particular affliction?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: No, we don’t yet. Of course, we just diagnosed this particular case in our laboratory and confirmed it less than 24 hours ago. We’re now starting the second phase, which is the on-farm investigation – what we call epidemiology – or looking for all of the factors that might have contributed to this animal being affected. But we’re just in the very early stages of that and have a lot of work left to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: It’s being assumed that it may be an atypical BSE, maybe mutation?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: Well, again, BSE has been around for over 20 years. There’s been a lot of work done, both in the United States and around the world, a significant amount of research done, and during that period of time the tests have continued to improve and we began to see – the scientific community began to see – occasional variation in the molecular, protein structure in that organism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So very rarely we find one that does not fit the typical molecular protein structure and this one, from our lab experts, appears to not fit the classical BSE structure. So we are referring the tests that we’ve done to other laboratories in Canada and England so we can work with other scientists to begin to classify and further characterize the organism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Dr. Dick, when will be able to get more information from the USDA about the process of how these cases are investigated and is there a plan in the works to do more intensive monitoring here in California?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: We will certainly provide information as it comes in. We have a \u003ca href=\"http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?navtype=SU&navid=BSE\">USDA website\u003c/a> and we would encourage people to go to it. We’ll be providing proactively and transparently the information as it becomes available, as we go through the investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Do we know if other cows in the herd have been affected?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: We have not yet been to the dairy at all and we’re just beginning that process so there’s no way to answer that at this point in time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Do you know how many of the 40,000 animals a year are tested for mad cow in California as opposed to other states?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: I don’t have an answer to that. We do know that California is statistically represented well in the sampling scheme. We set up our surveillance system to insure that we have broad representation by regions of countries. We do know that California is well represented and we’re doing an adequate number of sampling surveillance in the state of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: How long will it take, roughly, to determine if this came from the feed?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: Well, we will do the epidemiology. That varies depending on the size of the herd and a lot of different factors, but we have a group of folks hitting the ground today beginning that investigation. It’s likely to take several months before we have all of the factors put together, but certainly we’ll be doing that in a methodical, standardized way so that can capture everything that we need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Michael Hansen is with us as well, senior scientist for the Consumer’s Union, a nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports. A lot of concern from Consumer’s Union – break it down for us, if you could, Dr. Hansen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CONSUMER UNION’S HANSEN\u003c/strong>: Yes, the three things we’ve pointed out is, number 1, the surveillance is inadequate in our view. Forty thousand out of over 30 million cattle slaughtered is not an adequate sample size, regardless of what OIE says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I would point out, in Japan for example, all cattle above the age of 20 months that go into the food supply are tested. In many European countries, all animals above the age of 30 months are being tested – so it’s a far higher rate. That’s one. Second, in terms of the testing, it’s my understanding they’re not really testing any animals that are going into the food supply but basically testing what’s called ‘dead stock.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Hanford facility in California where this animal was rendered – they have advertisements – specialize in dead stock removal. So there’s a question of whether the animal was even alive when it was sampled, that’s been a problem with this surveillance program over time. When they had the huge expanded surveillance program where they tested 789,000, 85 percent of the cows were dead – no other information added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So we don’t think that’s an adequate sample; we think there needs to be much larger sampling in terms of testing. There have been companies that have wanted to use these same tests that the government is using to be able to test their cattle at slaughter so that they can sell them to other countries as BSE-tested, or even label them that way in this country, and the government is saying they cannot do that because they claim the tests are accurate if the government uses them but if the private sector wants to use them they’re completely inadequate and useless.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s also the issue of the feed or what we still allow to be fed to cattle, which is not allowed in other countries. We have banned the feeding of cattle parts directly back to cattle, but there’s still a lot of loopholes. Right now, you can grind up cows and they can be fed to pigs and chickens, and then pigs and chickens can be ground up and fed back to cattle. That’s an indirect mechanism where the agent could be getting into cattle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s also, because of these loopholes, a direct mechanism. It turns out cow’s blood is exempt from this so you can feed cow’s blood back to cow’s – and that is being done – spray-dried bovine plasma is being used as a calf milk replacer. We know the infective agent, the prion proteins, the mutated ones, are indeed found in blood that is being fed to cattle in this country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also allow the feeding of chicken litter, and that’s found in chicken coops. There’s two billion pounds, roughly, fed to cattle every year. In 2003, Dr. Lester Crawford, who was then acting Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, gave an interview where he pointed out that chickens waste so much feed when they eat, that chicken litter could be, up to one-third its weight, spilled feed. And of course, ground-up cows can indeed be put into chicken feed which can be spilled and we know two billion pounds of that is being fed to cattle every year. That practice is not allowed in Europe, not allowed in Japan, and is also not allowed in Canada. We need to close these feeding loopholes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’d also like to point out they’re saying this is an atypical case of BSE. The Washington Post is reporting this morning that it is the L-type BSE. The reason that is important is if it is indeed the L-type, there have been scientific studies where they used what are called humanized mice – these are mice that have been engineered so they only express human prions – and when you affect those mice with classical BSE or any of these atypical strains, it turns out that the L-type BSE is more virulent than classical BSE. The animals come down with BSE quicker and more rapidly. This has been shown in scientific studies, so if this is indeed the L-type BSE that is more virulent and that is upsetting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think what needs to be done is a dramatically expanded surveillance program and we need to find out how many other animals have been infected. It would also be good if we found out of the 40,000 of the animals tested every year how many are dead, how many of them were tested from animals that were exhibiting some kind of neurological symptoms when they were at slaughterhouses or elsewhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Well, you’re also concerned that the cows are not being tested before going to the slaughter house, aren’t you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CONSUMER UNION’S HANSEN\u003c/strong>: Yes. We are concerned. We think animals going into the food chain should be tested. You should be testing all the animals above a given age going into the food supply. I can point out that in Europe when they did this they found over a thousand cows between 2002 and 2006 that didn’t exhibit any symptoms but tested positive and were therefore kept out of the food chain, because these tests can also detect animals before they exhibit symptoms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: So Dr. Hansen, you think the USDA should allow private testing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CONSUMER UNION’S HANSEN\u003c/strong>: Absolutely. They should allow private testing with the approved tests that have been approved in this country and that are also used globally as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed there was a court case involving this, that Creekstone Farms brought against the government. They initially won the case but then when it was appealed at higher levels, the government actually got that overturned. We think that’s wrong. Private companies should be allowed to test their cows at slaughter as long as they use the approved tests and as long as any positive result should be required to be turned over to the government and ultimately made public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Tom Talbot is joining us as well. He’s a chair of the Cattle Health and Well-Being Committee, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. He’s also a veterinarian and California beef producer. Let’s first get your take on this L-type BSE. What do we know that score? Is this verified or is it just tentative? This could be a lot more serious, back in 2003 actually it was devastating to the beef industry when you had a virulent form.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CATTLE INDUSTRY’S TALBOT\u003c/strong>: I have not heard that at this stage, that it would be brand new information for me. I have stayed in close contact with everything that the USDA has put out, as well as a number of other sources, and that’s news to me. I think the bottom line on this is it’s still not the classic form of BSE, it’s a-typical. If as we know, as I think the scientific community within this country and internationally agrees, that the a-typical form is probably not contracted from eating contaminated feed as was the classic form that was seen primarily in Europe. I think the fact that whether it’s an L-form or not, it’s still an a-typical case, really says we’re dealing with an extremely rare form of the disease and probably one and we’re not going to see other cases within this incident.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Well, you know, it certainly would be reassuring to consumers to know that that’s incontrovertible at this point. But the suggestion that it may be the L-type of BSE brings that into question and now you’re having some concerns in the beef industry about South Korea halting its beef imports and talks about banning in Japan. Why that kind of resistance from Asian countries specifically?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CATTLE INDUSTRY’S TALBOT\u003c/strong>: Well, the Asian countries have been difficult in this thing all along. One of the things that came out immediately yesterday was both Canada and Mexico made the statement right off the bat that this would not interfere with their trading issues with the United States. It’s a different situation in Japan and South Korea. In many cases, we don’t deal with sound science in those countries. Whatever is going on with politics in those countries is what dictates what happens. If we go back to 2003 when we had our first case, and our export markets to those countries were shut down, it took an extremely long time to get those markets back even when we had shown that our country had very, very minimal amounts of this disease, and that we were in compliance with OIE guidelines and all these other things. So, what we deal with in those countries doesn’t go back to dealing with the science, it deals with a great amount of what’s going on politically in those countries. So those are difficult issues for us. If it was strictly up to the science, there should be no reason that we should lose those trading partners in this point in time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: But what about the loopholes we heard Dr. Hansen talking about? That doesn’t concern you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CATTLE INDUSTRY’S TALBOT\u003c/strong>: You know, I don’t think so. One of the things I wanted to touch on with one of his comments that we are testing primarily dead animals. You know, these are the highest risk animals. When we’re looking for the prevalence of a disease, we don’t want to go to the lowest risk animals, we want to go to the highest risk animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, in a situation where we’re looking at the animals that have the highest risk, and if the prevalence in those animals was high then I think there would be a greater concern of testing normal, healthy animals. But the fact the prevalence of this disease in high-risk animals is low, there’s the logical conclusion that the prevalence of this disease is very, very low.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other thing is that we’re talking about testing 40,000 heads of animals and if we don’t think that’s enough, we can go back to when we did detect BSE in this country back in December of 2003, a relatively short time after that – approximately June of ’04. Over the next two years, we tested almost 800,00 heads of high-risk animals. And what we found there was that the prevalence rate was extremely low and therefore it was determined that we could go ahead and reduce the amount of animals that were tested.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You know, this is based on sound epidemiological studies and I think we can feel comfortable in knowing that the prevalence in this industry is extremely low.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: I should mention that we just got word that Japan will not suspend its import of beef from the United States. Although, South Korea as of today has suspended and South Korea is the fourth largest importer of US beef. I wonder if you could say something, Tom Talbot, about pink slime – this kind of beef additive that has a lot of people concerned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CATTLE INDUSTRY’S TALBOT\u003c/strong>: The finely textured lean beef issue – that’s the proper term, I think pink slime is extremely inappropriate to use – finally textured lean beef is a product that has been around, has been produced in this industry for a long time. It’s a very healthy product, it’s a very safe product, and the fact that this issue came up after the product had been in the marketplace for many, many years is inappropriate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You know, there have been a number of studies, there is very good science that says this product is safe, that it is healthy and what it does is it allows us to use a greater amount of the product of the animal and it allows us to keep some of the prices for hamburger, ground beef at a lower rate, makes it more affordable, makes it easier for people to feed themselves. The fact that this was brought to the public’s eye by a disgruntled former USDA employee, and thrown back into our face by one of the news stations is inappropriate. It’s disregarded all of the sound science that we use to make sure that that stuff wasn’t on the market to begin with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Let me go back to Dr. Jerry Dick, who again is a veterinarian and Associate Deputy Administrator with the USDA Veterinary Services. Dr. Dick, people want to know, can they be reassured about buying meat at this point? I’d like to hear, if not reassurance from you, what they maybe ought to be looking for if they should be skeptical or concerned?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: I think Dr. Talbot hit the nail on the head. In short, the U.S. consumer can be confident that our meat and dairy products are safe. We have a long history of good surveillance systems, we are a part of the OIE which is 182 countries around the world that gather scientists together to study the best methods to do things in the cattle industry, the sheep industry, the hog industry, and we can be sure that we also work very closely, it bears pointing out, with the World Health Organization, CDC, and other human health organizations to help insure our science is cutting edge and that we’re providing products that are safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: We’re coming up on a break and I want to hear from the Consumer’s Union Dr. Hansen. If you could Michael Hansen, are you giving a caveat to consumers about beef and dairy products now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CONSUMER UNION’S HANSEN\u003c/strong>: No, we’re saying we’re concerned because enough still hasn’t been done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I would just very quickly like to say it’s not true that scientists think this atypical form is not from feed. Both of the atypical forms have been transmitted in humanized mice and if people want to do some feeding studies and grind up some of the brains of L-type or some of these other atypical BSEs, let’s feed them to other cattle and see if we can spread the infection that way. I bet you that most of the prion scientists out there would tell you that would turn up as a positive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So this notion that this cannot come from feed, there’s no scientific evidence of that, there’s no feeding study where they’ve taken brain material from an atypical BSE cow and fed it to other cows and not got transmitted.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Debate: Food Safety in Wake of California Mad Cow Case | KQED",
"description": "The discovery of the first case of mad cow disease in California and just the fourth in the U.S. has sparked a conversation over whether the nation's food safety protocols are working -- or not. Yesterday on KQED Public Radio's Forum program, a discussion on the case with: Jere Dick, veterinarian and associate deputy administrator with USDA Veterinary Services Michael K. Hansen, senior scientist at Consumer's Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports Tom Talbot, chairman of the Animal Health and Well Being Committee at the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, veterinarian and California beef producer Listen to the segment or read",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63564\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 250px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/04/beef_cattle_grazing_usda4.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-63564\" title=\"beef_cattle_grazing_usda\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/04/beef_cattle_grazing_usda4.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"164\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: USDA\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The discovery of the first case of mad cow disease in California and just the fourth in the U.S. has \u003ca href=\"http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201204260850/a\">sparked a conversation over whether the nation’s food safety protocols are working — or not\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yesterday on KQED Public Radio’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201204250900\">Forum program\u003c/a>, a discussion on the case with:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Jere Dick, veterinarian and associate deputy administrator with USDA Veterinary Services\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Michael K. Hansen, senior scientist at Consumer’s Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Tom Talbot, chairman of the Animal Health and Well Being Committee at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, veterinarian and California beef producer\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201204250900\">Listen to the segment\u003c/a> or read the edited transcript below…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Transcript\u003c/em>:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>HOST MICHAEL KRASNY\u003c/strong>: The USDA has confirmed, as a result of random sampling, a case of mad cow disease in a dairy cow in Hanford, California near Fresno. Agriculture officials say meat eaters are not at risk because it’s an atypical case, since the affected cow was not intended for the food supply and the disease cannot be transmitted by milk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the brain-wasting disease can be fatal to cattle and fatal to humans eating tainted meat. We discuss Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and other issues facing the beef industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Joining us from Washington, D.C. is Dr. Jerry Dick, who is a veterinarian, Associate Deputy Administrator with USDA Veterinary Services. And also glad to have Dr. Michael K. Hansen, who’s a PhD senior scientist with the Consume’s Union, a nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports. And we’ll also be joined by Tom Talbot from the National Cattleman’s Beef Association.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let me begin, Dr. Dick. with you, just by talking about most of the reports coming in saying that this shows how effective testing procedures are for BSE, but some criticism is saying that it’s kind of lucky and random you found this cow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: Actually we have a very extensive surveillance program in place, where we continually sample animals from several surveillance streams in order for us to be able to detect this disease all the time. We’ve been doing that for a number of years and every year we take about 40,000 samples to our laboratories on a randomized basis to continue to stay on the outlook for the disease. \u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: That’s a detection level of about one case for every million cattle. I know it exceeds the World Health Organization but 40,000 tested each year is, well, not enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: That’s about 10 times the OIE standard. We believe strongly that it is a very high level of sampling in this country, especially with the history we’ve had – we haven’t found but three cases, one of which was an imported case which we found in the Northwest about ten years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So we believe it’s a good sampling system, it provides us with a great level of confidence to find the disease if it’s present.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Do we know where this particular cow, where the disease came from with this cow? How the cow got this particular affliction?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: No, we don’t yet. Of course, we just diagnosed this particular case in our laboratory and confirmed it less than 24 hours ago. We’re now starting the second phase, which is the on-farm investigation – what we call epidemiology – or looking for all of the factors that might have contributed to this animal being affected. But we’re just in the very early stages of that and have a lot of work left to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: It’s being assumed that it may be an atypical BSE, maybe mutation?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: Well, again, BSE has been around for over 20 years. There’s been a lot of work done, both in the United States and around the world, a significant amount of research done, and during that period of time the tests have continued to improve and we began to see – the scientific community began to see – occasional variation in the molecular, protein structure in that organism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So very rarely we find one that does not fit the typical molecular protein structure and this one, from our lab experts, appears to not fit the classical BSE structure. So we are referring the tests that we’ve done to other laboratories in Canada and England so we can work with other scientists to begin to classify and further characterize the organism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Dr. Dick, when will be able to get more information from the USDA about the process of how these cases are investigated and is there a plan in the works to do more intensive monitoring here in California?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: We will certainly provide information as it comes in. We have a \u003ca href=\"http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?navtype=SU&navid=BSE\">USDA website\u003c/a> and we would encourage people to go to it. We’ll be providing proactively and transparently the information as it becomes available, as we go through the investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Do we know if other cows in the herd have been affected?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: We have not yet been to the dairy at all and we’re just beginning that process so there’s no way to answer that at this point in time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Do you know how many of the 40,000 animals a year are tested for mad cow in California as opposed to other states?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: I don’t have an answer to that. We do know that California is statistically represented well in the sampling scheme. We set up our surveillance system to insure that we have broad representation by regions of countries. We do know that California is well represented and we’re doing an adequate number of sampling surveillance in the state of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: How long will it take, roughly, to determine if this came from the feed?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: Well, we will do the epidemiology. That varies depending on the size of the herd and a lot of different factors, but we have a group of folks hitting the ground today beginning that investigation. It’s likely to take several months before we have all of the factors put together, but certainly we’ll be doing that in a methodical, standardized way so that can capture everything that we need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Michael Hansen is with us as well, senior scientist for the Consumer’s Union, a nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports. A lot of concern from Consumer’s Union – break it down for us, if you could, Dr. Hansen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CONSUMER UNION’S HANSEN\u003c/strong>: Yes, the three things we’ve pointed out is, number 1, the surveillance is inadequate in our view. Forty thousand out of over 30 million cattle slaughtered is not an adequate sample size, regardless of what OIE says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I would point out, in Japan for example, all cattle above the age of 20 months that go into the food supply are tested. In many European countries, all animals above the age of 30 months are being tested – so it’s a far higher rate. That’s one. Second, in terms of the testing, it’s my understanding they’re not really testing any animals that are going into the food supply but basically testing what’s called ‘dead stock.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Hanford facility in California where this animal was rendered – they have advertisements – specialize in dead stock removal. So there’s a question of whether the animal was even alive when it was sampled, that’s been a problem with this surveillance program over time. When they had the huge expanded surveillance program where they tested 789,000, 85 percent of the cows were dead – no other information added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So we don’t think that’s an adequate sample; we think there needs to be much larger sampling in terms of testing. There have been companies that have wanted to use these same tests that the government is using to be able to test their cattle at slaughter so that they can sell them to other countries as BSE-tested, or even label them that way in this country, and the government is saying they cannot do that because they claim the tests are accurate if the government uses them but if the private sector wants to use them they’re completely inadequate and useless.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s also the issue of the feed or what we still allow to be fed to cattle, which is not allowed in other countries. We have banned the feeding of cattle parts directly back to cattle, but there’s still a lot of loopholes. Right now, you can grind up cows and they can be fed to pigs and chickens, and then pigs and chickens can be ground up and fed back to cattle. That’s an indirect mechanism where the agent could be getting into cattle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s also, because of these loopholes, a direct mechanism. It turns out cow’s blood is exempt from this so you can feed cow’s blood back to cow’s – and that is being done – spray-dried bovine plasma is being used as a calf milk replacer. We know the infective agent, the prion proteins, the mutated ones, are indeed found in blood that is being fed to cattle in this country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also allow the feeding of chicken litter, and that’s found in chicken coops. There’s two billion pounds, roughly, fed to cattle every year. In 2003, Dr. Lester Crawford, who was then acting Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, gave an interview where he pointed out that chickens waste so much feed when they eat, that chicken litter could be, up to one-third its weight, spilled feed. And of course, ground-up cows can indeed be put into chicken feed which can be spilled and we know two billion pounds of that is being fed to cattle every year. That practice is not allowed in Europe, not allowed in Japan, and is also not allowed in Canada. We need to close these feeding loopholes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’d also like to point out they’re saying this is an atypical case of BSE. The Washington Post is reporting this morning that it is the L-type BSE. The reason that is important is if it is indeed the L-type, there have been scientific studies where they used what are called humanized mice – these are mice that have been engineered so they only express human prions – and when you affect those mice with classical BSE or any of these atypical strains, it turns out that the L-type BSE is more virulent than classical BSE. The animals come down with BSE quicker and more rapidly. This has been shown in scientific studies, so if this is indeed the L-type BSE that is more virulent and that is upsetting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think what needs to be done is a dramatically expanded surveillance program and we need to find out how many other animals have been infected. It would also be good if we found out of the 40,000 of the animals tested every year how many are dead, how many of them were tested from animals that were exhibiting some kind of neurological symptoms when they were at slaughterhouses or elsewhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Well, you’re also concerned that the cows are not being tested before going to the slaughter house, aren’t you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CONSUMER UNION’S HANSEN\u003c/strong>: Yes. We are concerned. We think animals going into the food chain should be tested. You should be testing all the animals above a given age going into the food supply. I can point out that in Europe when they did this they found over a thousand cows between 2002 and 2006 that didn’t exhibit any symptoms but tested positive and were therefore kept out of the food chain, because these tests can also detect animals before they exhibit symptoms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: So Dr. Hansen, you think the USDA should allow private testing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CONSUMER UNION’S HANSEN\u003c/strong>: Absolutely. They should allow private testing with the approved tests that have been approved in this country and that are also used globally as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed there was a court case involving this, that Creekstone Farms brought against the government. They initially won the case but then when it was appealed at higher levels, the government actually got that overturned. We think that’s wrong. Private companies should be allowed to test their cows at slaughter as long as they use the approved tests and as long as any positive result should be required to be turned over to the government and ultimately made public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Tom Talbot is joining us as well. He’s a chair of the Cattle Health and Well-Being Committee, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. He’s also a veterinarian and California beef producer. Let’s first get your take on this L-type BSE. What do we know that score? Is this verified or is it just tentative? This could be a lot more serious, back in 2003 actually it was devastating to the beef industry when you had a virulent form.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CATTLE INDUSTRY’S TALBOT\u003c/strong>: I have not heard that at this stage, that it would be brand new information for me. I have stayed in close contact with everything that the USDA has put out, as well as a number of other sources, and that’s news to me. I think the bottom line on this is it’s still not the classic form of BSE, it’s a-typical. If as we know, as I think the scientific community within this country and internationally agrees, that the a-typical form is probably not contracted from eating contaminated feed as was the classic form that was seen primarily in Europe. I think the fact that whether it’s an L-form or not, it’s still an a-typical case, really says we’re dealing with an extremely rare form of the disease and probably one and we’re not going to see other cases within this incident.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Well, you know, it certainly would be reassuring to consumers to know that that’s incontrovertible at this point. But the suggestion that it may be the L-type of BSE brings that into question and now you’re having some concerns in the beef industry about South Korea halting its beef imports and talks about banning in Japan. Why that kind of resistance from Asian countries specifically?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CATTLE INDUSTRY’S TALBOT\u003c/strong>: Well, the Asian countries have been difficult in this thing all along. One of the things that came out immediately yesterday was both Canada and Mexico made the statement right off the bat that this would not interfere with their trading issues with the United States. It’s a different situation in Japan and South Korea. In many cases, we don’t deal with sound science in those countries. Whatever is going on with politics in those countries is what dictates what happens. If we go back to 2003 when we had our first case, and our export markets to those countries were shut down, it took an extremely long time to get those markets back even when we had shown that our country had very, very minimal amounts of this disease, and that we were in compliance with OIE guidelines and all these other things. So, what we deal with in those countries doesn’t go back to dealing with the science, it deals with a great amount of what’s going on politically in those countries. So those are difficult issues for us. If it was strictly up to the science, there should be no reason that we should lose those trading partners in this point in time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: But what about the loopholes we heard Dr. Hansen talking about? That doesn’t concern you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CATTLE INDUSTRY’S TALBOT\u003c/strong>: You know, I don’t think so. One of the things I wanted to touch on with one of his comments that we are testing primarily dead animals. You know, these are the highest risk animals. When we’re looking for the prevalence of a disease, we don’t want to go to the lowest risk animals, we want to go to the highest risk animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, in a situation where we’re looking at the animals that have the highest risk, and if the prevalence in those animals was high then I think there would be a greater concern of testing normal, healthy animals. But the fact the prevalence of this disease in high-risk animals is low, there’s the logical conclusion that the prevalence of this disease is very, very low.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other thing is that we’re talking about testing 40,000 heads of animals and if we don’t think that’s enough, we can go back to when we did detect BSE in this country back in December of 2003, a relatively short time after that – approximately June of ’04. Over the next two years, we tested almost 800,00 heads of high-risk animals. And what we found there was that the prevalence rate was extremely low and therefore it was determined that we could go ahead and reduce the amount of animals that were tested.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You know, this is based on sound epidemiological studies and I think we can feel comfortable in knowing that the prevalence in this industry is extremely low.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: I should mention that we just got word that Japan will not suspend its import of beef from the United States. Although, South Korea as of today has suspended and South Korea is the fourth largest importer of US beef. I wonder if you could say something, Tom Talbot, about pink slime – this kind of beef additive that has a lot of people concerned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CATTLE INDUSTRY’S TALBOT\u003c/strong>: The finely textured lean beef issue – that’s the proper term, I think pink slime is extremely inappropriate to use – finally textured lean beef is a product that has been around, has been produced in this industry for a long time. It’s a very healthy product, it’s a very safe product, and the fact that this issue came up after the product had been in the marketplace for many, many years is inappropriate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You know, there have been a number of studies, there is very good science that says this product is safe, that it is healthy and what it does is it allows us to use a greater amount of the product of the animal and it allows us to keep some of the prices for hamburger, ground beef at a lower rate, makes it more affordable, makes it easier for people to feed themselves. The fact that this was brought to the public’s eye by a disgruntled former USDA employee, and thrown back into our face by one of the news stations is inappropriate. It’s disregarded all of the sound science that we use to make sure that that stuff wasn’t on the market to begin with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: Let me go back to Dr. Jerry Dick, who again is a veterinarian and Associate Deputy Administrator with the USDA Veterinary Services. Dr. Dick, people want to know, can they be reassured about buying meat at this point? I’d like to hear, if not reassurance from you, what they maybe ought to be looking for if they should be skeptical or concerned?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>USDA’S DICK\u003c/strong>: I think Dr. Talbot hit the nail on the head. In short, the U.S. consumer can be confident that our meat and dairy products are safe. We have a long history of good surveillance systems, we are a part of the OIE which is 182 countries around the world that gather scientists together to study the best methods to do things in the cattle industry, the sheep industry, the hog industry, and we can be sure that we also work very closely, it bears pointing out, with the World Health Organization, CDC, and other human health organizations to help insure our science is cutting edge and that we’re providing products that are safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KRASNY\u003c/strong>: We’re coming up on a break and I want to hear from the Consumer’s Union Dr. Hansen. If you could Michael Hansen, are you giving a caveat to consumers about beef and dairy products now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CONSUMER UNION’S HANSEN\u003c/strong>: No, we’re saying we’re concerned because enough still hasn’t been done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I would just very quickly like to say it’s not true that scientists think this atypical form is not from feed. Both of the atypical forms have been transmitted in humanized mice and if people want to do some feeding studies and grind up some of the brains of L-type or some of these other atypical BSEs, let’s feed them to other cattle and see if we can spread the infection that way. I bet you that most of the prion scientists out there would tell you that would turn up as a positive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So this notion that this cannot come from feed, there’s no scientific evidence of that, there’s no feeding study where they’ve taken brain material from an atypical BSE cow and fed it to other cows and not got transmitted.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63388\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 231px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/04/Eskender.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-63388 \" title=\"EskenderAseged\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/04/Eskender-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"231\" height=\"130\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chef Eskender Aseged reviews bread toasted for tonight's crimini mushroom crostini in his swank new kitchen at Bayview's Radio Kitchen & Africa. (Credit: KQED/Rachael Myrow)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://radioafricakitchen.com/\">Radio Africa & Kitchen\u003c/a> is one of a growing list of city- supported food businesses on Third Street in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood. It’s all part of a calculated redevelopment strategy to drive foodies to this long neglected corner of Southeast San Francisco. Yes, there is plenty of the mouthwatering BBQ and Soul Food you’d expect to find, but Bayview has a lot more to offer now, including at least three places to get a latte. (Is it just me, or is that a key indicator of foodie culture?)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Welcome to our Bayview. Welcome to Third and Oakdale,” said Mayor Ed Lee at a recent press conference for the restaurant’s launch. Most restaurant openings \u003cem>don’t\u003c/em> feature the local mayor, but the people packing this party were mostly city officials. Because San Francisco is this project’s biggest backer.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=213502483863484932538.0004be5c8180af16486ed&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=37.734442,-122.389412&spn=0.020364,0.019269&z=15&source=embed\">\u003cstrong>Bayview food map\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2012/04/26/bayview-foodie-crawl-can-you-handle-the-deliciousness-2/#recipe\">\u003cstrong>Recipe: Mushroom Wot Crostini with Mustard Greens, Berbere and Parmesan Cheese\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Radio Africa & Kitchen’s chef, Ethiopian-born Eskender Aseged, has served “pop up” dinners at one venue after another over the last eight years. His approach is heavily influenced by his experience at the now-defunct Square One, one of the first restaurants to take classic recipes from the Mediterranean and reinterpret them for the California palate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We take any country from all over Africa, specifically Ethiopia, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal or Nigeria, and then we sort of\u003cem> \u003c/em>bring on the fresher, more straightforward focus and cleaner taste,” says Aseged. \u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You won’t find \u003cem>fried\u003c/em> food at Radio Africa. Or ketchup. Or hot sauce. Aseged uses what he likes to call the power of Ethiopian spice mixes, like Berbere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a combination of sweet, spicy and aromatic. That is to say, birdseye chili, which can be substitute for cayenne chili, sweet paprika. We got cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, fenugreek, basil, shallot, ginger.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I explained in a report for \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/a/kqednews/RN201204260833\">KQED News\u003c/a>, Aseged couldn’t afford to launch a brick and mortar restaurant on his own, but he could put down about 35 grand. The city, through a variety of agencies, brought roughly $710,000 to the table and built the restaurant from scratch. It’s a street-level commercial anchor to a new condo complex .\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two months in, Aseged is still in a state of shock over his good fortune. This is a man used to making dinner for about 100 people off of two hot plates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have 12 burners, a grill, griddle, \u003cem>salamander\u003c/em>, two ovens. It’s kind of like, overkill over here,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aseged is expected to source some of his labor locally. The restaurant is serving dinner now, but soon it will open for lunch, featuring a new crop of young line cooks. They’re being trained nearby at the non-profit Old Skool Café, which works with troubled youth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even though the five-year-old Muni T has made this stretch of Third easily accessible, the street intimidates pedestrians, much like Geary and mid-Market do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It doesn’t feel walkable,” says Andrea Baker, a consultant for San Francisco’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development. “And therein lies the difficulty. Because small businesses tend to rely on foot traffic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While sipping a large cappuccino from the Road House Coffee Company at Third and Thomas, Baker says the city might help launch a \u003cem>bakery\u003c/em> next – or something Indian. (These days, there are more Asian Americans in Bayview than African Americans.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Why is it government’s job? Why isn’t it, I would say!” She laughs. “In our system, people pay taxes in the hope that if we all put a little something into it we can create big things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Forty years ago, Bayview became a code word for urban decay and gang violence. A lot of people have not reassessed, despite the arrival of gourmet pizza, outdoor concerts, and a new library under construction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You know, it’s not just me saying it. I think if you talk to community leaders, they’re seeing a renaissance here,” Captain Paul Chignell says. He’s the SFPD’s commanding officer for Bayview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not that the area is crime \u003cem>free\u003c/em>. There are lots of beat police in evidence day and night along the corridor. But Bayview still struggles to get the big crowds other crime-plagued neighborhoods in San Francisco enjoy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amy Cohen runs Neighborhood Business Development for the city. “It’s very challenging to get people to come here,” she says. “That’s honestly the power of restaurants in this town. We really feel like people will go anywhere for a good meal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even though Radio Africa & Kitchen is bustling/busy on a recent Friday night, its an expensive bet, perhaps the last of its kind after the state put the kaibosh on local redevelopment funds. But Chef Eskender Aseged brings with him a loyal clientele willing to give him — and Bayview — a chance to impress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re game to go on a foodie crawl in Bayview, here’s a Google Map to get you started:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=213502483863484932538.0004be5c8180af16486ed&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=37.734442,-122.389412&spn=0.020364,0.019269&z=15&output=embed\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"580\" height=\"600\">\u003c/iframe>\u003cbr>\nView \u003ca href=\"http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=213502483863484932538.0004be5c8180af16486ed&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=37.734442,-122.389412&spn=0.020364,0.019269&z=15&source=embed\">Bayview Foodie Crawl\u003c/a> in a larger map\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chef Aseged has graciously shared his recipe for \u003cstrong>Mushroom Wot Crostini with Mustard Greens, Berbere and Parmesan Cheese\u003c/strong>. As you can tell from the ingredient list, he’s used to cooking for a crowd. Adjust accordingly for your intended audience:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>-1 lb shitake mushroom sliced\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-1 lb crimini mushroom sliced\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-1 Tbs minced garlic\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-1 Tbs chopped parsley\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-1 Tbs chopped shallots\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-2 Tbs olive oil\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-1 tsp berbere \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-1 tsp sherry vinegar\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-1 bunch of mustard greens, chopped\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-Salt and pepper\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Directions\u003c/em>:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bake crostini in a 350-degree oven for about 5-7 minutes or until lightly browned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saute shallots and garlic in olive oil on medium heat for 3 minutes. Add mushrooms and cook for about 15 minutes on medium low, stirring often. Add the mustard greens and cook for another 5 minutes. Take off of heat and let it rest for a few minutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drain some of the liquid out of the pan and add \u003cem>berbere\u003c/em>, sherry vinegar, parsley, and salt and pepper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the \u003cem>berbere\u003c/em>, blend 1 tsp each of ground coriander, ground bird’s eye or cayenne chili, ground cardamom, ground cinnamon, ground or fresh ginger, ground fenugreek, dried basil, and ground pepper, plus 1 tbs sweet paprika and fresh shallot. Mix to taste.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scoop a spoonful of mushroom wot on sliced bread and sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top of them. Enjoy!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>For more local food coverage, check out KQED’s \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/checkplease/\">Check, Please! Bay Area\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"description": "Radio Africa & Kitchen is one of a growing list of city- supported food businesses on Third Street in San Francisco's Bayview neighborhood. It's all part of a calculated redevelopment strategy to drive foodies to this long neglected corner of Southeast San Francisco. Yes, there is plenty of the mouthwatering BBQ and Soul Food you'd expect to find, but Bayview has a lot more to offer now, including at least three places to get a latte. (Is it just me, or is that a key indicator of foodie culture?) "Welcome to our Bayview. Welcome to Third and Oakdale," said Mayor",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63388\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 231px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/04/Eskender.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-63388 \" title=\"EskenderAseged\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2012/04/Eskender-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"231\" height=\"130\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chef Eskender Aseged reviews bread toasted for tonight's crimini mushroom crostini in his swank new kitchen at Bayview's Radio Kitchen & Africa. (Credit: KQED/Rachael Myrow)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://radioafricakitchen.com/\">Radio Africa & Kitchen\u003c/a> is one of a growing list of city- supported food businesses on Third Street in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood. It’s all part of a calculated redevelopment strategy to drive foodies to this long neglected corner of Southeast San Francisco. Yes, there is plenty of the mouthwatering BBQ and Soul Food you’d expect to find, but Bayview has a lot more to offer now, including at least three places to get a latte. (Is it just me, or is that a key indicator of foodie culture?)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Welcome to our Bayview. Welcome to Third and Oakdale,” said Mayor Ed Lee at a recent press conference for the restaurant’s launch. Most restaurant openings \u003cem>don’t\u003c/em> feature the local mayor, but the people packing this party were mostly city officials. Because San Francisco is this project’s biggest backer.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=213502483863484932538.0004be5c8180af16486ed&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=37.734442,-122.389412&spn=0.020364,0.019269&z=15&source=embed\">\u003cstrong>Bayview food map\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2012/04/26/bayview-foodie-crawl-can-you-handle-the-deliciousness-2/#recipe\">\u003cstrong>Recipe: Mushroom Wot Crostini with Mustard Greens, Berbere and Parmesan Cheese\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Radio Africa & Kitchen’s chef, Ethiopian-born Eskender Aseged, has served “pop up” dinners at one venue after another over the last eight years. His approach is heavily influenced by his experience at the now-defunct Square One, one of the first restaurants to take classic recipes from the Mediterranean and reinterpret them for the California palate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We take any country from all over Africa, specifically Ethiopia, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal or Nigeria, and then we sort of\u003cem> \u003c/em>bring on the fresher, more straightforward focus and cleaner taste,” says Aseged. \u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You won’t find \u003cem>fried\u003c/em> food at Radio Africa. Or ketchup. Or hot sauce. Aseged uses what he likes to call the power of Ethiopian spice mixes, like Berbere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a combination of sweet, spicy and aromatic. That is to say, birdseye chili, which can be substitute for cayenne chili, sweet paprika. We got cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, fenugreek, basil, shallot, ginger.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I explained in a report for \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/a/kqednews/RN201204260833\">KQED News\u003c/a>, Aseged couldn’t afford to launch a brick and mortar restaurant on his own, but he could put down about 35 grand. The city, through a variety of agencies, brought roughly $710,000 to the table and built the restaurant from scratch. It’s a street-level commercial anchor to a new condo complex .\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two months in, Aseged is still in a state of shock over his good fortune. This is a man used to making dinner for about 100 people off of two hot plates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have 12 burners, a grill, griddle, \u003cem>salamander\u003c/em>, two ovens. It’s kind of like, overkill over here,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aseged is expected to source some of his labor locally. The restaurant is serving dinner now, but soon it will open for lunch, featuring a new crop of young line cooks. They’re being trained nearby at the non-profit Old Skool Café, which works with troubled youth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even though the five-year-old Muni T has made this stretch of Third easily accessible, the street intimidates pedestrians, much like Geary and mid-Market do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It doesn’t feel walkable,” says Andrea Baker, a consultant for San Francisco’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development. “And therein lies the difficulty. Because small businesses tend to rely on foot traffic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While sipping a large cappuccino from the Road House Coffee Company at Third and Thomas, Baker says the city might help launch a \u003cem>bakery\u003c/em> next – or something Indian. (These days, there are more Asian Americans in Bayview than African Americans.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Why is it government’s job? Why isn’t it, I would say!” She laughs. “In our system, people pay taxes in the hope that if we all put a little something into it we can create big things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Forty years ago, Bayview became a code word for urban decay and gang violence. A lot of people have not reassessed, despite the arrival of gourmet pizza, outdoor concerts, and a new library under construction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You know, it’s not just me saying it. I think if you talk to community leaders, they’re seeing a renaissance here,” Captain Paul Chignell says. He’s the SFPD’s commanding officer for Bayview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not that the area is crime \u003cem>free\u003c/em>. There are lots of beat police in evidence day and night along the corridor. But Bayview still struggles to get the big crowds other crime-plagued neighborhoods in San Francisco enjoy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amy Cohen runs Neighborhood Business Development for the city. “It’s very challenging to get people to come here,” she says. “That’s honestly the power of restaurants in this town. We really feel like people will go anywhere for a good meal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even though Radio Africa & Kitchen is bustling/busy on a recent Friday night, its an expensive bet, perhaps the last of its kind after the state put the kaibosh on local redevelopment funds. But Chef Eskender Aseged brings with him a loyal clientele willing to give him — and Bayview — a chance to impress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re game to go on a foodie crawl in Bayview, here’s a Google Map to get you started:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=213502483863484932538.0004be5c8180af16486ed&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=37.734442,-122.389412&spn=0.020364,0.019269&z=15&output=embed\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"580\" height=\"600\">\u003c/iframe>\u003cbr>\nView \u003ca href=\"http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=213502483863484932538.0004be5c8180af16486ed&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=37.734442,-122.389412&spn=0.020364,0.019269&z=15&source=embed\">Bayview Foodie Crawl\u003c/a> in a larger map\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chef Aseged has graciously shared his recipe for \u003cstrong>Mushroom Wot Crostini with Mustard Greens, Berbere and Parmesan Cheese\u003c/strong>. As you can tell from the ingredient list, he’s used to cooking for a crowd. Adjust accordingly for your intended audience:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>-1 lb shitake mushroom sliced\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-1 lb crimini mushroom sliced\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-1 Tbs minced garlic\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-1 Tbs chopped parsley\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-1 Tbs chopped shallots\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-2 Tbs olive oil\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-1 tsp berbere \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-1 tsp sherry vinegar\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-1 bunch of mustard greens, chopped\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>-Salt and pepper\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Directions\u003c/em>:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bake crostini in a 350-degree oven for about 5-7 minutes or until lightly browned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saute shallots and garlic in olive oil on medium heat for 3 minutes. Add mushrooms and cook for about 15 minutes on medium low, stirring often. Add the mustard greens and cook for another 5 minutes. Take off of heat and let it rest for a few minutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drain some of the liquid out of the pan and add \u003cem>berbere\u003c/em>, sherry vinegar, parsley, and salt and pepper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the \u003cem>berbere\u003c/em>, blend 1 tsp each of ground coriander, ground bird’s eye or cayenne chili, ground cardamom, ground cinnamon, ground or fresh ginger, ground fenugreek, dried basil, and ground pepper, plus 1 tbs sweet paprika and fresh shallot. Mix to taste.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scoop a spoonful of mushroom wot on sliced bread and sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top of them. Enjoy!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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},
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"info": "The day's top stories from BBC News compiled twice daily in the week, once at weekends.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BBC-World-Service-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
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},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
"title": "The California Report",
"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
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"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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},
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"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
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"order": 10
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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},
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"order": 1
},
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 9
},
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"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
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},
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"hidden-brain": {
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"source": "NPR"
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"how-i-built-this": {
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"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 18
},
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},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
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