Dirty grocery stores are everywhere

From WPIX:

From meat and produce, to cheese, eggs and milk, do how you know how clean your grocery store is?

An undercover investigation by PIX11 News revealed the city’s filthiest grocers, exploring all five boroughs and the markets that failed their state health inspections over the course of a year.

The state worked for months to give us those 5,000 pages of reports, which led us to your grocery aisles equipped with an undercover camera.

We found disgusting, unsafe and filthy conditions that easily could make your family sick.

Goldfeder wants online food stamp purchases authorized

From The Forum:

Grocery shopping is very different for shoppers using food stamps in the Bronx.

There, a select number of zip codes have the option of ordering groceries online, which has served as a lifeline especially for senior citizens. State Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder (D-Rockaway Park) called out the United States Department of Agriculture this week, asking why the same did not apply to southern Queens.

“Buying groceries should not be a nightmare for seniors with limited mobility,” Goldfeder said. “No senior should have to rely on friends and family when technology allows for an easier option.”

The assemblyman fired off a letter to USDA head and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, calling on the agency to use its power administering food stamp benefits at the national level to provide online grocery delivery services to zip codes in southern Queens and Rockaway. The service has been part of a pilot program the USDA launched this year to allow for online purchases of groceries using Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, which shoppers use to make purchases with their SNAP benefits – or food stamps. Goldfeder’s letter said southern Queens and Rockaway were home to a large senior population, and allowing residents to use their EBT cards to order groceries online would be a great relief to seniors unable to make it to the supermarket.

The latest food stamp fraud

From the NY Post:

Food stamps are paying for trans-Atlantic takeout — with New Yorkers using taxpayer-funded benefits to ship food to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels for the trip overseas, The Post found.

The practice is so common that hundreds of 45- to 55-gallon cardboard and plastic barrels line the walls of supermarkets in almost every Caribbean corner of the city.

The feds say the moveable feasts go against the intent of the $86 billion welfare program for impoverished Americans.

A spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service said welfare benefits are reserved for households that buy and prepare food together. She said states should intervene if people are caught shipping nonperishables abroad.

“Everybody does it,” said a worker at an Associated Supermarket in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn. “They pay for it any way they can. A lot of people pay with EBT.”

Customers pay cash for the barrels, usually about $40, and typically ship them filled with $500 to $2,000 worth of rice, beans, pasta, canned milk and sausages.

Workers at the Pioneer Supermarket on Parkside Avenue and the Key Food on Flatbush Avenue confirmed the practice.

They said food-stamp recipients typically take home their barrels and fill them gradually over time with food bought with EBT cards.

Grocer not exactly green

From DNA Info:

This green grocer has some Corona residents seeing red.

A produce wholesaler in the neighborhood is making life a nightmare for some — from refrigerated trucks spewing toxic exhaust, to workers making sexual comments and even threatening residents with "connections with Mexican gangs," a $10 million lawsuit claims.

The papers, filed in Queens Supreme Court earlier this month, also accuses the city and the NYPD of failing to respond to a "tidal wave of complaints" from residents about Moreno Produce, at 97-03 43rd Ave., in recent years.

Chief among the allegations is that trucks from the company, also known as Nuevo Mexico Lindo Su Abarrotera Central Corp., are being allowed to idle for "hours at a time...sending toxic pollutants into neighboring residential homes."
He said the trucks are also causing sleepless nights for residents, a problem that has been getting worse over the past two years.
According to the suit, which also names the city and the NYPD as defendants, trucks from the company block traffic, "forcing school buses and emergency vehicles to change their routes," and occasionally damage their vehicles.
Aside from the trucks, residents also have to contend with forklifts, which are used on the sidewalks and streets "in a recklessly dangerous manner," the suit says.

Moreno is also "allowing its employees to make rude, abusive and sexually suggestive comments and even...indicating that they have connections with Mexican gangs, when faced with complaints from the neighborhood," the complaint says.

Avella wants city to inspect grocery stores

From Douglaston Patch:

State Sen. Tony Avella, D-Bayside, is pushing for the city to be able to inspect supermarkets and farmers’ markets on the grounds that the state does not make evening inspections.

Last month, the senator and state Assemblyman Edward Braunstein, D-Bayside, introduced bills that would grant joint jurisdiction to the city’s Department of Health and the state’s Department of Agriculture over grocery stores and farmers’ markets in the five boroughs.

Avella said he believed the city should be able to grade supermarkets as it does restaurants due to the state’s policy of not sending inspectors out after 5 p.m.

He used the recent example of a Bellerose halal market that has racked up more than $25,000 in violations for unsanitary conditions.

“The fact is that the city has no jurisdiction over supermarkets, which is very strange when you think about it,” he said. “The state has no after-hours inspectors.”

He said his bill would also prevent some restaurants from evading a rating.

“I understand that some city restaurants are trying to reclassify themselves as supermarkets to get out of being graded by the city,” he said. “My legislation doesn’t call for grading supermarkets, but it prevents restaurants from getting out of the grading system and being inspected.

Shocking news: EDC prefers behemoth projects that enrich developers

From the Gotham Gazette:

EDC also has ended up running some projects that haven't been able to find a home anywhere else in the city government. For example, it is in charge of four city markets, including the innovative and successful Essex Market on the Lower East Side and La Marqueta in East Harlem, which has yet to prove sustainable.

These potentially vital neighborhood markets, however, are dwarfed by the multiple mall and supermarket projects fostered and financed by the group, including what could become the city’s first Walmart. More small-scale local markets could help bring healthy, fresh food to every neighborhood, especially at a time of food-related epidemics such as obesity and diabetes. In short, EDC's approach to economic development seems to mirror the preferences of the larger businesses in the private sector and direct public funds in their direction.

Despite having one foot squarely in the private sector, EDC is considered the "lead agency" on just about every major development proposal. Even though it's not a city agency, it has become, in effect, the city’s most significant entity for land use planning.

While the New York City Planning Department boasts of having done more than 100 rezonings since 2002, these only change regulations, while EDC actually negotiates the deals with major developers that determine what gets built. EDC's planning is always limited to the individual project and does not necessarily extend to neighborhoods or the city as a whole. But neighborhood-level and citywide planning rarely occurs in this city. Unlike other major U.S. cities, New York has never had a comprehensive master plan except for a 1969 draft that never even received a hearing at the City Planning Commission. Although there have been some 100 community-based plans, only ten have been officially supported and adopted.

When it comes to buying and selling land for development, EDC plays a critical role, even though it usually has to work through the city agencies that have the legal authority to actually acquire and dispose of property. EDC tells the mayor’s office what land and other forms of subsidy the private corporations say they need, and the mayor can then direct appropriate city agencies to act. This means that EDC is in the pilot's seat when it comes to long-term planning.

I simply must ask...

What in tarnation is an "executive grocery"? Also, why the comma after the street number?

Hmmm...