Menu Foods, other pet food makers and retailers involved in last year's massive pet food recall will set up a $24 million cash fund to compensate pet owners, according to a proposed settlement filed Thursday in federal court. The fund is expected to compensate thousands of pet owners in the U.S. and Canada who bought recalled pet foods made by Menu and 11 others. The products had a contaminated ingredient from China that sickened dogs and cats.

The Left Front government may claim to give equal importance to both industrialisation and agriculture, but nearly 30,000 villagers of 20 villages in Uluberia do not believe them. For they have to incur huge financial losses every year as their crops are damaged by contaminated water used for irrigation. The water they use comes from the Hangar canal, which they say has become contaminated with poisonous residue, left over by "illegal" liquor factories.

On April 6, the chief justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court, Justice V K Jain, said pesticides threaten living populations as well as the the future generations. "Even mother's milk is no longer

Nalgene, the brand that popularized water bottles made from hard, clear and nearly unbreakable polycarbonate, will stop using the plastic because of growing concern over one of its ingredients. The decision by Nalgene Outdoor Products, a unit of Thermo Fisher Scientific, based in Rochester, came after reports that the Canadian government would declare the chemical bisphenol-a, or BPA, toxic. Some animal studies have linked the chemical to changes in the hormonal system.

Mercury is a persistent contaminant that biomagnifies up the food web, causing mortality, reproductive failure, and other health effects in predatory wildlife and humans. From 1930 to 1950, industrial mercuric sulfate entered the South River, a tributary of the Shenandoah River in Virginia (United States). To determine whether this mercury concentration had moved into the adjacent terrestrial food web, the researchers anlayzed total mercury concentrations in blood from adults of 13 terrestrial feeding bird species breeding within 50 m of the river.

Social stability will be shattered if the price-hike of food continues, said the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The impact of the soaring prices of food on the poorer section of the people is very significant and may turn out to be devastating, said the president of the MCCI, Latifur Rahman, at a meeting with the Bangladesh Bank's governor, Salehuddin Ahmed, on Wednesday. Market imperfections, domestic supply shortfalls and imported inflation are the three main reasons behind the rising inflation, he pointed out.

>> Governments of Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast have announced a joint health programme to tackle a meningitis epidemic, which has gripped the bordering area of the two countries. By the second week

An ingredient in weedkiller has been detected in a bottle of green tea sold at a Tokyo supermarket, and police and its manufacturer suspect the substance was deliberately mixed into the bottle, officials said Saturday. The incident involved a bottle of Healthya, a hit product made by Tokyo-based Kao Corp. touted as dissolving fat. A 43-year-old man in Nerima Ward who suffered minor diarrhea after drinking the tea told police the cap on the bottle appeared to be loose when he opened it.

Beware Chinese rice. That's the message following the discovery of rice consignments containing an experimental genetically modified strain called Bt63. From 15 April, all rice imported from China into the European Union must be certified as free of Bt63.

A dietary survey was carried out during summer and winter seasons on 20-40 years old subjects i.e. 23 and 49 women from sewage and tube well irrigated areas, respectively around Ludhiana city (Punjab, India). Raw food samples from both the areas were analyzed for various minerals. Mineral intake by individual subjects were calculated from the amount of food consumed and mineral contents of foods.

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