More problems with Government Agencies while working on the Katrina aftermath.
This time from the Department of Agriculture --
The UK Mirror has the story:
EXCLUSIVE: UP IN FLAMES
Tons of British aid donated to help Hurricane Katrina victims to be BURNED by
Americans
Hundreds of tons of British food aid shipped to America for starving Hurricane Katrina survivors is to be burned.
US red tape
is stopping it from reaching hungry evacuees.
Instead tons of the badly needed NATO ration packs, the same as those eaten by British troops in Iraq,
has been condemned as unfit for human consumption.
And unless the bureaucratic mess is cleared up soon it could be sent for incineration.
One
British aid worker last night called the move "sickening senselessness" and said furious colleagues were "spitting blood".
The food, which cost British
taxpayers millions, is sitting idle in a huge warehouse after the Food and Drug Agency recalled it when it had already left to be distributed.
Scores of
lorries headed back to a warehouse in Little Rock, Arkansas, to dump it at an FDA incineration plant.
The Ministry of Defence in London said last
night that 400,000 operational ration packs had been shipped to the US.
But officials blamed the US Department of Agriculture, which impounded
the shipment under regulations relating to the import and export of meat.
And a few comments from the relief workers in New Orleans:
The worker added: "There will be a cloud of smoke above Little Rock soon - of burned food, of anger and of shame that the world's richest
nation couldn't organise a p**s up in a brewery and lets Americans starve while they arrogantly observe petty regulations.
"Everyone is revolted
by the chaotic shambles the US is making of this crisis. Guys from Unicef are walking around spitting blood.
"This is utter madness. People have worked
their socks off to get food into the region.
"It is perfectly good Nato approved food of the type British servicemen have. Yet the FDA are saying that
because there is a meat content and it has come from Britain it must be destroyed.
The food they are talking about is the equivalent to our MRE's that are being handed out to flood victims.