Following last fall’s crisis over E. coli contamination of spinach, the growers, distributors and retailers of salad mix started talking about improving their safety practices. A fair amount of activity in this area has been happening in California, including some bills in the legislature and voluntary standards like the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement. (Be […]

Noshette and I went down south to Charleston, South Carolina, to attend a wedding of an old childhood friend of hers and we did a little bit of Ethicureanating while we were there. (once the word Ethicurean gets an entry in the dictionary, we’ll have to figure out how to conjugate it.)
A quick bit of […]

The stinginess and lack of ethics shown by Burger King and its contractors in balking over giving Florida tomato pickers a penny-a-pound raise is outrageous.
Eric Schlosser, the journalist who exposed the dirty underbelly of the fast-food industry in "Fast Food Nation" has a scathing op-ed in the Times today about the injustice. After reviewing […]

The Wall Street Journal has this correction today to its Nov. 16 article on "Politically Correct Developments," which had put to rest some of the speculation over why Alice Waters was involved with Montana’s Ameya Preserve:

WADE DOKKEN, a developer of the Ameya Preserve housing development in Paradise Valley, Mont., paid $100,000 to Slow Food Nation, […]

Breaking news and developments, such as contaminated-food outbreaks, Farm Bill milestones, and how the farming community is faring around the world.

In-depth, offbeat, or thought-provoking features about aspects of SOLE food, from eating locally to farms marketing to methods of food preservation.

Posts by bloggers at both personal and nonprofit sites that you won’t want to miss.

Kei, a commenter on my blog, recently asked about what kind of produce is available these days in Kansas. A San Franciscan, she was surprised by the dearth of produce she found recently in New York compared with her home.
Although I gave her a brief answer, I thought I’d check it out in a trip […]

The other day I got a press release from the USDA (PDF) announcing that Brian Wansink had been appointed the Executive Director of the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP):

Dr. Wansink will be responsible for overseeing the planning, development and review of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the food pyramid known as MyPyramid.gov […]

Apologies to those who have sent us links to include in the Digest, or who have been waiting impatiently for their dose of news and bad puns — I have been dealing with a tragedy that happened last week. I hope to be able to catch up on all the Digesting within a few days.
 

Are the locavores — those who strive to eat a diet of locally produced foods — responsible for the ruination of poor African farmers? The headline — "Farmers in developing world hurt by ‘eat local’ philosophy in U.S." — of an op-ed in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle certainly makes that charge. The […]

Since becoming a vegetarian, I’ve been more inclined to celebrate Thanksgiving according to its original intent: to give thanks for a successful harvest by eating the results of that harvest. I like to look to the garden or the farmers market and celebrate the rich bounty of vegetables available at this time of the year — as well as the stories behind them — to celebrate a 100-Mile Thanksgiving, at least in part.

Five hundred grand — that’s what Alice Waters sold us out for, reports the Journal: “Ms. Waters says she signed onto the project because Mr. Dokken agreed to pledge $500,000 to Slow Food Nation, an organization she founded: ‘I wanted the money for Slow Food.’”

Tomorrow’s New York Times Sunday Magazine has a story about the DVD release of “Sesame Street: Old School,” and its bizarre-sounding agrarian sequences on farms.Many of them can be found on YouTube.

Breaking news and developments, such as contaminated-food outbreaks, Farm Bill milestones, and how the farming community is faring around the world.