Digest: California ID’s stores selling recalled products, NYT aims at Whole Foods, Maine fish wars
File under "About Time": A new California law will allow health inspectors to release the names of stores where products recalled for bacteria contamination may have been sold. Fearing the USDA may follow suit nationwide, wholesalers and Big Meat are girding for battle. USA Today
Wholely wars: In a story that must have been carefully timed to run with the Mackey-Pollan event — yet strangely doesn't mention it — Marian Burros asks whether Whole Foods is straying from its roots. New York Times
Fighting for scraps: With Maine's fisheries in serious trouble, groundfishermen want the state to overturn a law that says they can't sell lobsters accidentally caught in their nets. (Maine laws currently protect the lobster trawlers' business from other methods.) The lobstermen, a vocal bunch, say they don't want to bail them out. New York Times
E. coli finger pointing: Investigators have traced contaminated spinach from last year's E. coli outbreak to a 50-acre plot in San Benito County on a farm that was transitioning from conventional to organic methods. Monterey Herald
Tastes like chicken: The inspector who gave the thumbs up to a KFC/Taco bell's one day before TV crews filmed rats scampering all over it has been relieved of a job. New York Times
Buried treasure: In Chuckey, Tennessee, an orchard of 350 hazelnut trees has begun to sprout Périgord truffles thanks to Tom Michaels, a 59-year-old plant pathologist, pianist and Scrabble tournament competitor. They are the first American-grown versions of the fungi ever to excite top chefs. Interestingly, such prized truffle varieties are disappearing from the world's supply, as they depend on being eaten and excreted to spread their spores — not so easy now that humans snap all of them up instead of wild pigs. Until recently, they resisted all attempts at controlled cultivation. New York Times
Outward earthbound: Myra Goodman, founder of Earthbound Farms — the gigantic grower of organic greens — has written a cookbook called "Food to Live By: The Earthbound Farm Organic Cookbook." Earthbound's spinach was one of the ones implicated in the outbreak, and it has also had to defend itself from criticism that it is too big to be "good." We wonder if broccoli growers will be offended by Goodman's assertion that all broccoli tastes the same. Seattle P-I
Where's the meat: Undeterred by the fact that everyone else long ago reviewed Tristram Stuart's history of the idea of vegetarianism, "The Bloodless Revolution," Laura Shapiro devours it and then declares herself unsated philosophically. Slate
We're in the money (at least for now): The U.S. Department of Energy has bequeathed $385 million today to six "demonstration" projects in four states to make ethanol from more than just corn kernels — also from corn stover, wheat straw, milo, switchgrass, wood waste, and trees. Des Moines Register
Better than farmed salmon?: Ten years after the ban on wild abalone, local farmers are successfully producing this seafood delicacy and endangered mollusk for Bay Area menus, using eco-friendly aquaculture. San Francisco Chronicle
Guns, Milk, and Steel: Developing a gene a few thousand years ago that produces a necessary enzyme to digest milk helped Europeans to survive and thrive. BBC News
Chefs return to school: Parents who can really cook are heading back to school to serve up healthy and tasty meals for school children. Montreal Gazette
