 | | A weekly look at some of the events and activities at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Teaching children about wildfire, preventing foodborne illness, and greening USDA. Those stories and more in USDA Week In Review
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Narrator (Susan Carter): Teaching children about wildfire, preventing foodborne illness, and greening USDA. Those stories and more in USDA Week In Review. USDA is teaming up with Disney to teach about the danger of wildfire. Public service announcements using the movie Planes-Fire and Rescue have hit the media.
Fred Hernandez, Acting Fire Prevention Program Coordinator, U.S. Forest Service: It draws that younger audience in. You know, anything that we can do to get their attention initially. Making them understand that there are consequences to leaving a fire unattended and those kinds of things i think is valuable.
Narrator: Teachers can also use the p-s-a's in the classroom. New poultry inspection rules will do more to prevent dangerous food borne illness.
Brian Ronholm, Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety: The focus now is on the invisible pathogens like salmonella and campylobacter. Those are the threats that you cannot see.
Narrator: Under current rules, USDA inspectors also look for blemishes and flaws on poultry. But now they'll be focused on stopping food borne illness, which is good news for consumers.
Brian Ronholm, Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety: I think what consumers can expect is a better inspection system that will provide for safer products to the market and hopefully that will translate into fewer foodborne illnesses.
Narrator: With the new rules, USDA can shut down poultry plants that do not take measures to control foodborne illness threats. USDA headquarters is helping the environment by going greener, especially with a roof covered with live plants.
Ed Murtagh, USDA Sustainable Operations Manager, Office of Operations: The intent of the green roof is to absorb the storm water, to retain it and allow the plant materials to help clean and cleanse the storm water runoff.
Narrator: Another green improvement is a rain barrel in the people's garden that catches and holds rainwater.
Cecilia Hernandez, USDA Program Analyst: The rainwater would otherwise go onto the hard surface, get chemicals, get polluted and run into the river. We're absorbing it and reusing it.
Narrator: The green roof and rain barrel are two USDA efforts to keep runoff out of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. And before we go we have a new feature in USDA Week In Review. The photo of the week will feature an agriculture related image. This week's photo features 9 year-old mobile app creator Nicholas Come from Sacramento, California. Aside from being an entrepreneur, he's also a budding ag journalist. Those skills were put to the test during his recent visit to USDA headquarters in Washington. Nicholas met with Deputy Secretary Krysta Harden and Peoples Garden Initiative and Farmers Market Program Manager Annie Ceccarini explaining his app "Nicholas' Garden" which highlights healthy recipes by kids-for kids. To see more USDA photos go to USDA's Flickr photo stream. That's all for USDA Week In Review. Follow, tweet, and stay informed at USDA dot-gov.
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