Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Excellent Q&A with Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl about the politics of food, including Red-State-Blue-State diets.
New York Times: Why it’s hard to pinpoint the source of the E. coli outbreak in spinach and eliminate it from the food supply. Natural Selection Foods, best known for its organic Earthbound Farm brand of salads, is still only connected to the outbreak “epidemiologically” — no bacteria have been found in the company’s products.
San Francisco Chronicle: The USDA, a French institute, and Cornell University have collaborated on a genetically engineered stone fruit tree, the ‘HoneySweet’ plum, that resists the deadly-to-trees plum pox virus. However, consumers — and supermarkets — are likely to be wary. A genetics professor warns that splicing antibiotic-resistance genes from bacteria into plums and other crops could transfer such antibiotic resistance to bacteria in the soil, and from there, to bacteria that are animal and human pathogens. Has sidebar on why the HoneySweet won’t cross with wild plum trees.
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