We scour the Web to bring you SOLE food news. Send links we’ve missed to tips@ethicurean.com.
Boston Globe*: New England’s biggest dairies, including those that supply Dean Foods, are stopping their use of Monsanto-manufactured artificial growth hormones in a bid to lure back customers who have switched to organic milk. The Globe article has an online […]

Folks in Austin are cordially invited to a tour of the Food You Can Trust farm. Meet Chickenman, Chickenwoman, Elsa the Tour Guide and Baby John, and get some eggs and milk, and some grass-fed beef as well. If you’ve been reading about Ethicurean hero Chickenman and his farm, then you know how lucky we […]

Des Moines Register: The USDA has agreed to apply the 28-Hour Law, a regulation originally written for trains that transported livestock, to today’s trucking industry. Livestock must now be unloaded every 28 hours during shipment and given feed, water, and rest. We first wrote about this in July; the agency was under pressure from the […]

OK, now I’m angry. Really angry — in a good way. After more that three weeks of trying to find my writing voice — and not having enough procrastination time built into my schedule to coax it out — it’s finally back! Nothing like a little David and Goliath drama to spur me back into […]

Grist: Grist interviews Majora League, founder of Sustainable South Bronx, who works to “green” the least green part of New York City.
KUOW: KUOW’s The Conversation looks at the pros and cons of buying locally. Recordings of the show are available in RealAudio and MP3 formats.
Grist: Regular readers probably guessed that we were waiting for […]

Michael Pollan has posted a thoughtful response to Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s last open letter. He continues the discussion with the observation that Whole Foods can play a critical role in the promotion of sustainable and local markets, and urges them to continue to be open and honest about their practices.
But it’s important […]

If you watched the Future of Food (see Corn Maven’s review), chances are you found yourself tearing up over the plight of Percy Schmeiser, the independent farmer who was sued by GM corporation goliath, Monsanto.

Not GM as in General Motors, although in my opinion their practices are just as horrifying. Monsanto is GM as in […]

BBC: The World Wildlife Fund urges Europeans to eat less fish, because of illegal and destructive fishing practices. Consumers are urged to buy fish that has the Marine Stewardship Council label, indicating sustainable sourcing.
Daily News Central: Organic Pastures’ raw milk has tested negative for E. coli, but the recall still stands.
Seattle P-I: The P-I […]

My entire adult life — which I date loosely as beginning from my first credit card, at age 17, so half my life ago — I have been a compulsive grocery shopper. You would think I’d lived through a time of famine, or perhaps been raised in a Soviet Bloc country. I remember doing my […]

Chicago Tribune blog: How to identify organic, conventional industrial, and genetically modified produce — just by using the PLU on the sticker.
Yahoo! press release: Whole Foods has found what it says is a sustainable source for the Patagonian toothfish, the endangered but oh-so-tasty fish also known as Chilean sea bass. [DQ says: Hmm. Wonder […]

Seattle is a pork-happy town. I observed the local fondness for pork not long after moving to the city three years ago. In addition to sandwiches and burgers featuring bacon, which is to be expected, pork plays a prominent role in breakfast. “Of course,” some of you say, “ham and eggs for […]

Newsday: An NYU medicine professor does a terrific job of laying the blame for the E. coli outbreak at a new source — the opposing incentives of ranchers, farmers, and fertilizer suppliers. He points out how the system’s set up to maximize profits at every level, not to ensure safety or to forestall health threats.
More […]

Salon.com*: The source of the E. coli in the spinach crisis could be deer droppings.
East Bay Express: Cover story explores the amount of food wasted in the Bay Area, focusing on the people who find ways to make use of it.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Pennsylvania supermarkets and consumers are getting excited about local farms.
In Grist recently: Some […]

Wow. During a recent news trawl I came across an article in the Pt. Reyes Light, a Marin County newspaper, with a graphic picture of chickens having their throats cut. That’s just not something you encounter often in this era of shrinkwrapped, skinless, boneless, denatured breasts and thighs.
The chickens in the photo belonged to […]

Never mind how many people got sick from bagged spinach — how many of you are sick of the spinach outbreak? But before you move on to the raw-milk controversy, take a minute to read what spinach farmers themselves are saying.
The most widely blogged right now is Andy Griffin of Mariquita Farms, writing in the […]