Feast Down East is an economic model to aid small scale farmers in eastern North Carolina. Dr. Leslie Hossfeld explains:
“It’s an economic development program that addresses high poverty in southeastern North Carolina. We focused primarily on the challenged agriculture sector, and by targeting limited resource farmers and helping them to find new markets for their products. We do that by informing consumers and talking about the importance of buying local.”
The program feeds into the local food movement, which is still going strong:
“The awareness that local food is healthier, it’s not traveling a lot of miles to get to us, it helps the local economy, so it’s not surprising that we’ve had increased demand for local food. We are able to match the local food demand with small scale farmers by helping them to build their capacity to meet this demand.”
To learn more visit their website, feast down east.org.
Surprising Substances Found in Chicken Feathers
Scientists have analyzed an animal food additive made from chicken feathers...to discover what those chickens had been fed. CBS News Correspondent Barry Bagnato says they were surprised to find a number of substances, including some banned drugs:
“Fluoroquinolones antibiotics banned for poultry have been found in a common animal feed additive made from chicken feathers. An environmental technology researcher at Johns Hopkins, says they were detected in two thirds of the samples from the US and China, ‘We suspect the poultry industry may still be using fluoroquinolones despite the ban.’ Also found were traces of prescription and over the counter drugs ,’Acetaminophen, Diphenhydramine the active ingredient in Benadryl, fluoxetine the active ingredient in Prozac.’”
Retail Sales Increase in March
From Nordstroms, to Target, to Home Depot, retailers posted encouraging sales gains in March. Ken Perkins, president of RetailMetrics, says consumers were buying more than just clothes:
“It hasn’t just been the apparel, the warm weather in March really gave people the bug to get out and make purchases, whether it was baseballs and bats or patio furniture and gardening materials.”
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