On Thursday night I was driving home from work with my radio set to NPR like the good Seattle liberal that I am. The BBC World Service was airing, and I paid partial attention as I maneuvered onto the freeway. I really enjoy listening to the BBC, even if the tone of the […]

Farm Bill pressure: Those who wanted Americans to realize just how broadly the Farm Bill affects all those who eat or grow food may have done their job a bit too well — it seems everyone has an opinion on what the new bill ought to cover. The latest to weigh in:

General policies: A Register […]

Heather from the Center for Food Safety has alerted us that dairy-state senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Herb Kohl (D-WI) introduced legislation yesterday seeking to ban, without exception, milk, meat or other food products from clones — or their offspring — from getting the green seal of approval from the USDA’s organic program.
While the National […]

Bird-flu vs. mad-cow trading: The U.S. might start importing cooked poultry products from China, which has had several deaths from avian flu; some think it’s a bid to get China to drop its ban on U.S. beef, in place since a 2003 case of mad-cow disease. Less than 1% of the chicken Americans eat comes […]

I used to make fun of the Dairy Queen Mother for talking to strangers everywhere she went — in elevators, grocery stores, even movie-theater bathrooms. Actually, she still does it, and I still tease her about it, partly because she has no “psychodar” (sorry, Mom).
But when the subject is SOLE food, I’m finding it […]

Bird-flu biosecurity failure: Forget the wild-bird-acting-alone theory. Bird flu was found last night to have spread through the Bernard Matthews turkey complex in Suffolk, England, and the H5N1 strain of the flu was also linked to the company’s processing plant in Hungary, from which meat is sent all over Britain. The revelations are embarrassing for […]

There’s a benefit for Slow Food tonight from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Ferry Building in San Francisco. Admission to “Food from the Heart” is free, and the marketplace’s merchants and restaurateurs will be offering seasonal hors d’oeuvres for $2 each, while Slow Food will pour interesting wines to taste for $5 per […]

OK, I just made that term up.
But how else to explain why, when you Google the word Ethicurean, the second result after this blog is the website for Campton Place Restaurant in San Francisco?
The restaurant serves “an innovative, refined contemporary menu that marries classical techniques and the startlingly fresh seasonal foods available year-round in California,” […]

To explain why the personal posts have been a little sparse lately, several of the Ethicureans are on hiatus and I’ve been wrapped up in Operation Pork — a hog share I’ll write about as soon as I’ve recovered from it — along with the ever-more-demanding Digest. (If only someone would pay to syndicate it. […]

Slate’s Andy Bowers has a funny little video about what a meal made up with all the food and beverages advertised during the Super Bowl would comprise, with a beer for every Budweiser commercial, for example.
Needless to say, if you eat all this crap in one sitting regularly — which is not inconceivable for the […]

Roe, roe, roe your boats: The United Nations’ conservation panel announced it was lifting its export ban on three types of caviar, including beluga, saying Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran, and Russia had improved their monitoring of the fisheries. Conservationists are not pleased. Toronto Star
Lobster reversal: Whole Foods doesn’t sell live lobsters anymore because of concerns about […]

In the spirit of cross-promotion, I just wanted to alert people that journalism student Jeremy Rue has been named the recipient of UC Berkeley’s annual Dorothea Lange photography fellowship, which happens to be administered by my office. Why is this Ethicurean related? Well, Rue has been recognized for his stunning color photos of the often-invisible […]

Wednesdays are always a busy day for the Digest, but this one might be a record. Hope you’re hungry, people, because there’s an 18-course meal’s worth of links today.
Get thee back into the lab, FDA!: Biotech reporter Denise Caruso has a kick-ass top-notch op-ed about why the FDA’s science regarding the safety of meat and […]

I am about to turn a corner in my life. A sharp corner. This isn’t a story about eating organic food, or even local food. This is a story about not eating any food at all.
Besides eating to survive, I have been getting more deeply involved in food and eating for about 20 years. It […]

In response to overwhelming demand, UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism has moved the Feb. 27 event with Whole Foods CEO John Mackey and writer Michael Pollan from 700-seat Wheeler Hall to the much grander Zellerbach Hall (2,000+ seats). The original tickets went on sale Feb. 1 and were gone in under two hours.
The Wheeler […]