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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 poll in which 86.5% of more than 2,000 respondents say they’d pay more for hormone-free milk.
San Jose Mercury News (via AP): Organic Valley raw-milk products have been cleared as being E. coli-free and the quarantine lifted. Unfortunately, the Seattle Times reports that two children are now sick allegedly from drinking raw milk from Grace Harbor Farms, a small dairy north of Bellingham, sold by PCC Natural Markets and Whole Food Markets.
L.A. Times*: All nine bags of baby spinach contaminated with E. coli have been traced to Dole brand conventional spinach packaged by Earthbound Farms. The company plans to introduce E. coli testing that will delay packaging 24 hours, an expensive move that will shorten greens’ 17-day shelf life. Sales are off 40%.
New York Times*: California is poised to grab Wisconsin’s tiara as No. 1 cheese producer in America.
CattleNetwork: Univ. of Nebraska scientists asked 273 consumers to taste and rate U.S. grainfed versus imported grassfed steaks. A majority perferred grainfed, but enough voted for grassfed (19%) to suggest “a niche market” could be supported.
L.A. Times*: Target has introduced its own line of organic foods.
San Francisco Chronicle: Michael Pollan gives a talk at a garden benefit; account provides a good refresher course on the benefits of local and sustainable food.
New York Times*: India is so rapidly depleting its groundwater supply through unregulated private pumping that water scarcity could threaten whole regions, leaving the country unable to farm and feed its people.
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Humor:
September 30th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
Eat locally grown food from your local farmers market.
Grow your own food in your backyard. Really!
The problem with the ecoli spinach isn’t ecoli, it’s factory farming.
By the by, did you know that the first outbreak of this particular ecoli occurred on a military base? Same deal with Lyme Disease. There’s a semi-secret military research facility in Lyme Connecticut where the disease was first discovered in 1975. Same story with so-called “Black Mold”.
–the dread Paxman