357,000 “meals ready to eat ” are sitting uneaten in an Arkansas warehouse at a cost of £9,000 a day in storage fees. The meals were donated to the Americans by the British to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. According to the [BBC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4344168.) the meals fell foul of a US ban on British beef dating from 1997 following the BSE scare. However some meals, 118,000 or so, have already been distributed and presumably eaten. Regardless, the US is now, in turn, trying to find another country to donate the remainder.

This raises a couple of questions. Firstly, is it in the Americans ‘gift’ to give away a gift? Couldn’t they have found a less crass way to resolve this, perhaps offering these meals - which ultimately belong to the British taxpayer - back to the British for them to distribute as they see fit?

Secondly doesn’t all this expose the US ban for the non-tariff barrier it essentially is? Does anyone actually believe the British with their ferocious media would dream of feeding their troops infected meat ? Why doesn’t the US just admit these rules are there simply to protect their farming interests? If they weren’t there’d now be busily checking up on the thousands of Americans who’ve already consumed 118,000 of these ”deadly” British meals to check whether they’re showing signs of spongy bovine behaviour ….bet they’re not though.

Labels: Upside down, maybe?

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