US to burn food sent for Katrina victims.

Germans I spoke to in Weimar the other day were flabbergasted and angered that the US refused its offers of aid for Hurricane Katrina victims, but I wonder how Brits feel: the FDA is reportedly planning to burn up to 400,000 food rations donated by the British. An unnamed British aid worker says:

This is the most appalling act of sickening senselessness while people starve.

The FDA has recalled aid from Britain because it has been condemned as unfit for human consumption, despite the fact that these are Nato approved rations of exactly the same type fed to British soldiers in Iraq. Under NATO, American soldiers are also entitled to eat such rations, yet the starving of the American South will see them go up in smoke because of FDA red tape madness.

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.

All this while another storm, Hurricane Rita, bears down on southern states. Predicted to become a Category 4 storm, it has Louisiana (including New Orleans) and Texas (where thousands of Katrina evacuees have been moved to) in its path.