Sorry for the additional tooting of our horn, but last week the food writer and chef Andrew Zimmern, host of the Travel Channel’s "Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern," ran a brief interview with us Ethicureans on his blog Kitchen Table. His staff asked us to weigh in on what we thought were the top three […]

The Humane Society has managed to get graphic footage of workers at a California slaughterhouse using forklifts, high-pressure water sprays, wooden sticks, and electric shocks to get sick cattle up on their feet so they can pass USDA inspection and be processed into the meat supply. Filmed by an undercover worker, the footage is horrifying for anyone who cares a smidgeon about animal welfare.

Jane Black has a great article in the Washington Post’s food section today, about how the recent tsunami of headlines on contaminated food from China, E. coli outbreaks, and cloned meat has caused an increasing number of people "to become their own food inspectors, using the Internet and their values about health, the environment and […]

I am fortunate to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where year-round we can eat foods produced within 100 miles of our homes, feast on a diverse, abundant range of organic fruits and vegetables and ethically-raised animals, and are not too surprised to pass Alice Waters while doing our weekly farmers market shopping.

…Being a close community, they passed me on to their neighbors at Visser Family Farms, where I talked to Kathy Visser and was able to order two legs of lamb for our holiday feast, along with a box of organic Pink Lady apples from their neighbor’s farm.

During both World War I and II, the American government mandated that its citizens ration food in order to feed the troops overseas. In order to supplement their rations of meat, oil, sugar, and other precious foods, the American people followed the government’s call to plant War Gardens (in WWI) and, later, Victory Gardens. Home […]

As evidence that sustainable agriculture is hotter than a compost pile in July, the 28th annual Ecological Farming Conference known to all as Eco-Farm — from which I’ve just returned — completely sold out in record time. More than 1,500 farmers, ranchers, educators, and activists descended on Asilomar, the conference center set in a beautiful oceanside national park near Monterey, CA. Here, a few attendees tell why they were there.

Life is full of compromises, particularly if you have a kindergartener living in the house. On a recent stormy weekend, I made the grand announcement that I was going to read all weekend long and that it was everybody’s job to take care of me. That plan lasted about ten minutes. My […]

Special to The Ethicurean, by Barry Foy
Reactions ranged from bewilderment to outrage at Ethicurean.com today, following news that the food watchdog had fallen victim to a hostile takeover by chemical/genetics giant Monsanto Corp.
Monsanto’s announcement was upbeat: “We are pleased to welcome Ethicurean.com into the Monsanto family (The Stuff of Life: We Own It…for the Children®). […]

As a follow-up to Tom Philpott’s post about genetically modified crops (also known as transgenic or genetically engineered crops), I thought I’d post some data on transgenic crop adoption in the United States. Because products made from transgenic crops are never labeled, it is probably not well known that over 70 percent of […]

The hopes of more than 700 California raw-milk supporters following last week’s seeming victory in Sacramento were dashed today in the Assembly Appropriations Committee. The issue of raw-milk safety and California bacteria standards — instead of being revoked — will now be taken up by a "blue ribbon" commission charged to research and recommend a […]

 
Indiana joined Pennsylvania and Ohio this week in an effort to ban the use of growth hormone-related labels on milk sold in the state. The Indiana House Committee passed HB 1300, a bill which would ban the use of “compositional” and “production-related” claims about milk. If you cannot confirm the difference in a lab or […]

The 2008 Ecological Farming Conference kicked off near Monterey, CA, tonight with a talk on sustainability given by Eric Schlosser, whose best-seller “Fast Food Nation” was not really about food, he said, but about this country and its untenable, massive experiment in disposability — not of the obvious packaging, but of its raw materials (living animals) and workers.

Pardon me for interrupting our regularly scheduled programming. Just so I don’t have to type this to one more person — I have a pinched-nerve/disc problem that is giving me stabbing pains in my neck and right arm. I can barely type or mouse with my right hand without wincing. I am also leaving for […]

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been in the news a lot lately.
Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle had a front page story about the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. One of the causes is the routine addition of antibiotics to animal feed as "growth promoters" — including some antibiotics used for treatment of humans.
In a New York Times […]

On December 17, 2007, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that the government will be implementing a new "Food and Consumer Safety Action Plan".
Apparently, the federal health and agriculture departments want feedback from Canadians on how the government should carry out its proposed food and consumer safety action plan. They have set up a website […]