NEWS

File under “WTF?!?!”: Buried at the end of a FarmPolicy.com post are a bunch of excerpts from a truly astonishing Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) about what the high cost of corn is doing to animal feed. It leads with Alfred Smith, who’s augmenting his hog feed with trail mix, and includes this jaw-dropping passage:

Pigs and cattle are downing cookies, licorice, cheese curls, candy bars, french fries, frosted wheat cereal and peanut-butter cups. Some farmers mix chocolate powder with cereal and feed it to baby pigs. ‘It’s kind of like getting Cocoa Puffs,’ says David Funderburke, a livestock nutritionist at Cape Fear Consulting in Warsaw, N.C., who helps Mr. Smith and other farmers formulate healthy diets for livestock.

In what screwed-up reality is that a “healthy diet” for any animal? No wonder the FDA wasn’t worried about pigs eating melamine.

The wild wild east: Rick Weiss weighs in with the definitive piece on China’s terrible export record — in addition to the usual list of icky foods, he mentions that the rejects usually show up again at ports under a different name — and why it’s a travesty that the U.S. is considering allowing in Chinese poultry. Money quote: Corporations and the federal government seem willing to put the interests of business “above the public welfare,” says John C. Bailar III, who chaired a 2003 National Academies committee that recommended major changes in the U.S. food safety system. (Washington Post) Related: Cool map of how melamine-tainted ingredients spread across the U.S. and Canada

“Crack for farmers”: A handful of UC Berkeley seniors who graduated yesterday from the College of Natural Resources wore green sashes or armbands to protest their keynote speaker, Nairobi-based plant pathologist Florence Wambugu, because they disagreed with her views on biotechnology. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Nearly 130,000 pounds of beef in 15 states recalled for possible E. coli contamination (WBV Boston)

Melamine tested as suspect in colony collapse disorder (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)

HIV in breastmilk killed by flash-heating but nutrients retained, new study finds (UC Berkeley press release)

FEATURES & COMMENTARY

Death by stupidity, more like: “Real Food” author Nina Planck’s op-ed today is sensationally titled “Death by Veganism” —The International Herald Tribune version is called “Meanwhile: A baby cannot live by plants alone” — and not surprisingly it’s occupying the No. 1 slot on the Most E-Mailed list. She uses some clearly irresponsible parents who starved their infant on a soy and apple-juice diet to indict veganism as a viable diet in general. The blogs are alive with sounds of “right on, sister!” and “who the %$^&* is Nina Planck?”. Our take: Presumably far more meat-eaters under-nourish or starve their children — why pick on vegans? While it’s not an alternative diet that any of us Ethicureans practice, the few vegans we know (or read about) are quite aware of the nutritional balancing act the choice requires. (New York Times)

Salmon chanted: A court ruling might protect the world’s largest salmon fishery, in Alaska, from the mining of the continent’s biggest gold deposit. A ban on dumping mine waste into natural lakes and streams closes a Bush Administration loophole in favor of the fishery. (Mother Jones)

Have a grassfed cow: Heifer International, known for its work in developing countries, is collaborating with a local association in New York State to help build farmer-to-farmer networks and farmer-to-community connections. The article includes a shout-out to grass-feeding of cows. (Adirondack Daily Enterprise)

Paul Krugman on how food-safety failures are due to conservative fear of regulation (New York Times Select)

ON THE BLOGS

Stop this shit: Kerry at Eating Liberally has a question for you. “Would you like to see your hard-earned dollars used to conserve precious wetlands and vital habitats, or would you prefer to see that money used to build football field-sized pools of pigshit generated by industrial pork producers?” OK, the answer’s obvious, but get the back story by reading Ethicurean e-pal Aimee Witteman’s more complete explanation of what’s at stake in this political struggle between the conservation title and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) over at Gristmill. And then, we beg you, contact your representatives and tell them to stand up for conservation.

Ferry Plaza 1, Safeway (and Carlo Petrini) 0: Ferry Plaza farmers market groupie (in a good way) Sam does the math, and finds that over the last two weekends, shopping for fresh produce there saved her “a full 29% on what I would have spent on the same or inferior items at Safeway.” Snap! Kudos to Sam. (Becks & Posh)

FARM BILL SPECIAL

The scorecard: Dan Owens, bless him, has collected links to all the Farm Bill editorials from this weekend, complete with synopses of who’s pro- or con- what. (Blog for Rural America)

Lugar love: Another newspaper editorial swoons over the crop-subsidy reform proposal from Sen. Lugar (R-IN) et al, which has zero chance of being enacted. But since the House Ag Chair Collin Peterson is from the paper’s home state of Minnesota, perhaps the idea will be planted to sprout in the 2012 Food and Farm Bill. (Star Tribune)

Hill’s bills: Senators Hilary Clinton (D-NY) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) introduced a bill that aims to increase availability of healthy food and to connect farmers and eaters, especially in schools and underserved communities. (Herkimer Telegram) The American Public Health Association supports the above plan, calling it part of the solution to the problems of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

Casters for conservation: Meet another Food and Farm Bill interest group — sport fisherfolk. (Kansas City infoZine)

Farm Bill o’ rights: This Dan Imhoff editorial on the Farm Bill has appeared widely already, but it remains a good overview of what’s at stake if you haven’t been paying attention. (San Jose Mercury News)