Slow Food Nation, the three-day festival that’s been hyped as the “Woodstock of the food movement” and the “first international culinary congress,” has begun and is full swing.

Canada is gearing up for a shift in its food system. Two things have happened to spur this possible upcoming shift in Canadians’ buying and eating habits.
First, Maple Leaf Foods, Canada’s largest food processor, has announced that some of their products contain a strain of listeria bacteria. There have been many illnesses and several deaths. […]

Of those Americans surveyed recently by the Center for Food Integrity, more were worried about the safety of their food than about the war in Iraq or global warming.

An article in this week’s New York Times explains why “greening” (caused by a bacterium, Candidatus liberibacter asiaticus, and resulting in green, lopsided, bitter fruits) in the Florida citrus industry is a bad thing.

All of the recent beef recalls have originated at large-scale meat processing plants. So fittingly, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service turns its eye on… the tiniest operations.

As part of the “How We Eat” series at the Commonwealth Club last week, Slow Food Nation Policy and Communications director Naomi Starkman moderated a thoughtful panel discussion about the centralization of the food industry with Michael Dimock, President of Roots of Change, Paul Frankel, managing director, Ecosa Capital and Don Shaffer, President and CEO, RSF Social Finance.

California’s ongoing drama about permitting raw (unpasteurized) milk to be sold in stores has turned sour once again this week. Just when it looked like proposed legislation palatable to the raw dairy industry — that would allow those that implemented a more holistic food-safety program to opt out of draconian bacterial counts — would flow smoothly through the legislature, some new twists threaten to shut off the tap once again.

By Debra Eschmeyer
The carrots with which we entice our children to perform well have morphed into colossal sugary carrot cupcakes, as highlighted in the Los Angeles Daily News this morning. The article portrays the debate over the appropriate incentives to get children to read as pitting one responsible party against another. Whose job is it […]

When artist Chris Jordan began the first talk of the 2008 TASTE3 conference, the audience was excited, engaged, and ready to learn. As he showed his first few slides — paper bags, plastic cups, water bottles — they started squirming a bit, as Jordan showed how everyday actions like drinking a bottle of water or buying groceries create nearly inconceivable quantities of waste and environmental damage when the whole nation is considered.

Did you hear the one about how our great, politically appointed bureaucrats bypassed better-qualified locations for the planned National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in favor of one with more desirable political connections?

The wave of ground-beef recalls entangling even Whole Foods has grown to tsunami proportions for Nebraska Beef Ltd.: the amount of beef recalled has reached 6.66 million pounds, as food injury lawyer Bill Marler recently pointed out. If nearly 100 people sick is not enough, the Mark of the Beast’s appearance suggests that End Times […]

So, let’s talk about MaryJane’s Farm, shall we? I’m feeling conflicted, and I need some help sorting it out. Recently, a giant box full of MaryJane’s Farm instant organic meals arrived on my doorstep, the result of a  long-ago gift certificate I only recently cashed in.
In previous posts, Ethicureans have quipped that “friends don’t […]

While walking down Broadway in Oakland (between 30th and Brook), I came across the remarkable poster shown above. A Google search for “Edible Root Crew” turned up nothing. Is this the work of some nearby youth gardeners? Or are the words on the poster some kind of urban slang? Or could it be that the […]

Last Sunday’s New York Times looked at some recently released data from the USDA Economic Research Service showing that between 1970 and 2006 the diet of the average American grew by 1.8 pounds per week.

Another day, another E. coli recall from the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. This time the recall is for 1.2 million pounds of “primal cuts, subprimal cuts and boxed beef” packed by Nebraska Beef in Omaha, Nebraska, bringing Nebraska’s bad beef total to a whopping 6.5 million pounds. Primal cuts are large sections of […]