RSS Feed

NEW YORK (AP) — “Sell by?” “Display Until?” “Best Before?”
These food date labels intend to help shoppers figure out what to throw away, but they’re also mixed up with deadlines for retailers as well. That causes confusion among shoppers who can’t figure out what they all mean on a can of beans or a bag of pasta. As a result, shoppers discard food that is either safe or usable after the date to the tune of $29 billion a year in the U.S. alone.
Now, some of the biggest consumer goods companies including Walmart, Nestle, Campbell Soup Co., Kellogg Co. and Unilever, have agreed to streamline them by 2020. There are at least 10 different date labels on packages.
The Consumer Goods Forum, a Paris-based network of 400 companies across 70 countries that is leading the charge, said Wednesday companies would have the choice of one of two labels. One, which highlights “Use by,” would be an expiration date for perishable items. The other label — “Best if Used by” — would apply to non-perishable items like a can of soup, though the exact wording will be tailored by region.
“The confusion will always end up with that particular food in the trash,” said Ignacio Gavilan, sustainability director of the Consumer Goods Forum. He noted that the goal is to have the labels like “Display Until” that are meant for retailers appear instead in barcodes.
Dave Stangis, vice president of corporate responsibility and chief sustainability officer at Campbell Soup, said that simplifying food date labeling will reduce shoppers’ doubt about what to throw away.
“We support a labelling framework that clearly communicates food quality and food safety, coupled with comprehensive consumer education,” he said in a statement.
In February, the Food Manufacturing Institute and the Grocery Manufacturers Assoc-iation, the two major trade associations for retailers and consumer products manufacturing, announced a similar labeling move that pressed their members to streamline food date labels by 2018.

November 26, 1955 — September 21, 2017

Gregory James Hebert, 61, a resident of Morgan City, passed away Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017, at Morgan City Health Care surrounded by his loving family.

Gregory was born Nov. 26, 1955 in Morgan City, the son of Hilton Hebert and Loretta Aucoin Hebert.

Gregory was an outdoorsman; he loved to be at the camp, hunting, fishing, and cooking whenever he could. Gregory played the bass guitar for the Cajun Four Band as well as the Lil Tupelo Band. He also enjoyed his time at Morgan City Health Care where he would play bingo many times throughout the week, as well as play music for the other men and women at the nursing home.

Gregory will be sadly missed and lovingly remembered by his former wife, Veronica Gaudet of Morgan City; two sons, Craig Hebert of Morgan City, and Greg Hebert and wife Sheena of Morgan City; two daughters, Brandi Hebert and companion Corey Mire of Morgan City, and

Brittany Hebert and companion Ejay Acosta of Morgan City; two brothers, Gary Hebert of Mississippi and Clint Hebert of Morgan City; three sisters, Debra Fabre of Morgan City, Jeannie Hebert of Bayou Vista, and Connie Hebert of Bayou Vista; and seven grandchildren, Tyler
Hebert, Zarian Hebert, Logan Hebert, Zayne Mire, Nevaeh LeBlanc, Madelyn Billiot and Micah Acosta.

Gregory was preceded in death by his parents, Hilton and Loretta Hebert; one daughter, Michelle Hebert; and one granddaughter, Zoee Hebert.

A graveside service will be held at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2017, at Morgan City Cemetery with Tom Higginbotham officiating.

BATON ROUGE — A decade of near-constant financial problems has taught Louisiana officials to assume the worst, be leery of good news and always look to the next shortfall.

Perhaps that’s why the announcement that Louisiana closed the books on the last budget year with a surplus expected to top $100 million was greeted with only modest enthusiasm, rather than the eruption of trumpets one might anticipate.

Republican House Speaker Taylor Barras declared he was not ready to “pop the champagne yet.” GOP Senate President John Alario suggested everyone “take a deep breath” at the news. And Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards called it “a positive step.”

One could question if Louisiana’s top leaders know how to celebrate.

But then again, the governor and lawmakers are staring at another looming budget gap that’s 10 times larger than the surplus — and news that $100 million-plus is on the table already has started disagreement about how to spend it.

State economist Manfred Dix told Louisiana’s income forecasting panel Thursday that tax collections, largely from better-than-expected sales and personal income taxes, exceeded revenue projections by about $140 million in the 2016-17 financial year, which ended June 30.

Dix warned the estimate was preliminary and unaudited, and still needed to be compared against spending levels. But after the accounting is completed, a surplus is expected.

Too bad that can’t bail Edwards and lawmakers out of next year’s problems.

The state faces a more than $1 billion gap in mid-2018, when temporary sales taxes passed by lawmakers last year expire.

Under Louisiana’s constitution, surplus dollars can only be spent on certain one-time expenses, like debt payments, construction work and coastal projects, not ongoing agency expenses and continuing programs. At least 10 percent of any surplus is supposed to pay down
retirement debt, and a quarter of a surplus is earmarked for the state’s “rainy day” trust fund.

Lawmakers could try to indirectly use some of the surplus money to help with the upcoming shortfall, by paying down debt early so they can spend fewer state tax dollars on debt payments a year later. But that would only be a short-term and small-dollar fix in the scope of the gap.

Edwards and lawmakers are locked in the same ongoing debate about whether to renew the expiring taxes, raise other taxes or make deep budget cuts that they’ve been having for the last year. No consensus has been reached so far.

Meanwhile, diverging viewpoints already have surfaced on how to spend the surplus cash during the next legislative session, which could shape up into another contentious fight in a Legislature riddled with divisions.

Barras wants to use more than the required 25 percent for the rainy day account, to repay the $99 million lawmakers took from the fund in a February special session to help close a previous deficit.

The savings account currently contains about $287 million. It was nearly three times that amount before it was repeatedly tapped by lawmakers during the tenures of both Edwards and former Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Use of the rainy day money was contentious in the February special session, with House GOP leaders resistant to tapping the fund, but Edwards and Senate leaders warning that refusal to use the money would force damaging, unnecessary cuts on programs and services.

Alario said he doesn’t want to rush into making decisions about the surplus, preferring to wait and see how the dollars fit into the larger financial picture. Edwards also hasn’t backed a specific plan for how he’d like to spend the excess, indicating he’d “consider” Barras’ rainy day fund replenishment idea. Other lawmakers are eyeing the dollars for roadwork and projects.

Beyond the immediate benefit of surplus cash to spend, the governor and lawmakers are hoping the better-than-expected tax collections mean Louisiana’s economy is on the path to recovery after being hammered by the oil and gas industry downslide.

But even there, the enthusiasm and expectations remain modest.

Edwards said the surplus shows “we are heading in the right direction.” Alario called it “a sign that our economy’s picking up somewhat.” And Barras said he’s hopeful it’s a “trend that can continue.”

Melinda Deslatte has covered Louisiana politics for The Associated Press since 2000. Follow her at http://twitter.com/melindadeslatte

Sammy Roberson was a smallish guy, or so I remember him. I never saw Sammy when he wasn’t behind the wheel of his car.

A picture, probably from high school in the mid- to late 1960s, shows Sammy in a suit and tie. His carefully combed hair was a little out of control. He had a friendly, slightly gap-toothed grin.

After he left school, he worked with my dad at a rural Missouri factory.

Dad worked there during the day and raised hogs when he got home. Dad overslept a lot.

When he did, and Sammy pulled up in front of our house to pick up Dad for work, it was my job to run out and ask Sammy to hang on for a few more minutes. I was maybe 11.

One day, I overheard Mom and Dad talking about Sammy. He’d been drafted.

In those days, getting drafted meant going to Vietnam. And from the way the folks talked, Vietnam wasn’t at the top of the list of places Sammy wanted to go.

Sammy went.

And on April 4, 1970, in Quang Tri Province in South Vietnam, Army Pfc. Samuel L. Roberson, 20, of Bland, Missouri, was killed as a result of enemy action. He was one of two men from our little county of 12,000 who died in Southeast Asia.
In 40 years of reporting, I've been privileged to interview veterans going all the way back to World War I. But Sammy Roberson was the only casualty of war who touched my life in that way.

The St. Mary veterans memorial on U.S. 90 has a panel in which the names of 17 parish men who died in Vietnam are inscribed. So I know the war touched lives here, too.

Sammy came to mind again this week as I’ve watched the “The Vietnam War,” the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary on PBS. It concludes this week.

It’s natural to think of loss when we think of that war. Sometimes it seems that the only thing we got from that war was loss.

The documentary raises a lot of the old questions: Was fighting communism enough justification, even when the government we fought to defend was corrupt and incompetent?

Didn’t the domino theory prove to be true? Didn’t the communists take over in Cambodia and Laos after Vietnam fell? Didn’t communists kill hundreds of thousands of Cambodians?

Were the Americans who fled to Canada to get out of the draft cowards? Or were they, as one wheelchair-bound vet said in a class discussion at college, the real heroes?

Where’s the line between protest and treason?

Should our government lie to us if the end cause is noble? Which causes are noble? Who decides?

Have we finally decided to stop blaming brave young people for the messes that frightened old people put them in?

We’ve surely had opportunities to ask those questions again since Saigon fell on that terrible night in April 1975, when people clung to the skids of Huey helicopters lifting off from the roof of the U.S. embassy.

If there’s any consolation to be had in remembering Vietnam, it’s the way the courage of young Americans can redeem our doubts and missteps. Two notable examples involve men from South Louisiana.

One of them was Hugh Thompson, a Georgia native who flew helicopters for the energy industry after the war and then served as a Louisiana Department of Veterans Affairs counselor for Acadiana.

During the war, Thompson and two crewmen put their helicopter and its guns between rampaging American soldiers and villagers of Son My during what became known as the My Lai Massacre. At least 354 Vietnamese civilians, and maybe as many as 500, were killed based on
faulty intelligence that said the mostly peaceful rice farmers were in cahoots with the Viet Cong.

Two officers, Capt. Ernest Medina and Lt. William Calley, were brought before courts martial in connection with My Lai. To many, including officials in the Nixon administration, Medina and Calley were heroes being unjustly accused. Smearing Thompson looked like the way to keep them out of the stockade.

And Thompson did get attacked, even during congressional testimony. But by the late 1990s, when he went to Vietnam and met with My Lai survivors, Thompson’s heroism was recognized. Former U.S. Sen. John Breaux nominated Thompson for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Thompson died in 2006.

Stephen Bennett of Youngsville was another kind of pilot who showed another kind of bravery.

During North Vietnam’s Easter 1972 offensive, several hundred North Vietnamese regulars attacked a platoon of South Vietnamese soldiers not far from where Sammy Robertson had been killed two years earlier. That’s according to the account in Air Force magazine.

Bennett and his Marine observer, Mike Brown, were in a prop-driven two-seater, the OV-10, on their way to Da Nang after a mission when they heard the South Vietnamese soldiers’ call for help. Bennett tried to call in air support, but this was 1972 in Vietnam, and there wasn’t any. Artillery fire wasn’t practical because the enemy troops were so close to the South Vietnamese.

So Bennett and Brown flew to the rescue. They trained the OV-10’s four machine guns on the North Vietnamese. Brown, who runs a gun shop in Texas now, told me a few years ago that they were able to drive the enemy soldiers back on four passes.

But as they came around for a fifth, the OV-10 was hit, either by a surface-to-air missile or a rocket-propelled grenade. Bennett gave the order to bail out, but Brown was wounded and his parachute ripped to shreds.

So Bennett made the decision to make the 15-minute flight to the Gulf of Tonkin and ditch the OV-10 so Brown could get out safely.

One problem there: No pilot had ever survived an attempt to ditch an OV-10. Brown said Bennett knew that, and decided to ditch the plane anyway. That was the only way Brown was going to survive.

When Bennett put the plane in the water, Brown was able to get out. Bennett was killed.

Bennett’s family received his posthumous Medal of Honor on Aug. 8, 1974, from Gerald Ford on the first day of Ford’s presidency.

Brown said later that he’d made a study of Medal of Honor winners. Most, he said, made some snap decision, like those who dove on grenades to save their comrades. Others made decisions that they surely knew would result in their deaths and still kept their resolve long enough to perform their feats of courage.

Bennett belonged to the second category, Brown said.

There's one answer to one question, at least.

Bill Decker is managing editor of The Daily Review. Reach him at bdecker@daily-review.com.