Cattle Feed, Graffiti, Fungicide and Hangovers

Those of you with a taste for ginger will be used to reading about ginger food and drink. News of the latest dessert or cake or alcoholic ginger beer may well have you licking you lips in anticipation. So what must it be like for our animal friends? I only ask as I've just read in the Farmers Guardian about a beef finishing business in East Yorkshire in England. Here, farmer John Gatenby feeds his cattle on a range of food manufacturing by-products including ginger syrup. I wonder if it affects the taste of the meat? And does it make the meat tender? Ginger is well known as a meat tenderizer but that is at the preparation and cooking stages. I'd love to try some.

The Lo-Down, the community website for Manhattan's Lower East Side, reported on the unusual form of advertising adopted by Bruce Cost's Fresh Ginger, Ginger Ale. The drinks company created a fantastic graffiti mural on the outside walls of a corner building. Can't see this style of advertising happening here in the UK. Pity really.

It looks like Australian ginger growers will have to change their planting programme. Currently, ginger 'seed' is treated with carbendazim, a benzimidazole fungicide, before planting to protect against soft rot and to induce early sprouting. Now the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) has proposed the withdrawal of carbendazim use for various agricultural products including ginger seed pieces. Research by APVMA has shown that use of the fungicide may pose a risk to consumers and farm workers. So what can the farmers use in its place? Apparently imazalil has been found to be an effective replacement. I know, it means nothing to me either.

We've mentioned a couple of times on All Things Ginger that drinking a ginger tea or infusion can be helpful in reducing the effects of a hangover. It is said to combat nausea and settle the stomach. But what happens if the hangover has been caused by overindulging in an alcoholic ginger beer (very popular here in the UK), a ginger wine or a spirit with a natural ginger mixer? My hangover days have long since gone so I shall leave it to someone else to test.