Archive for June, 2009
Canadian restaurants that serve seal come in for criticism
“It’s no worse than veal”: The handful of restaurants in Canada that serve seal got a boost last month, when the European Union banned imports of commercially caught Canadian seal products. Canada allows two different hunts each year: a small one by Inuits in the Arctic that pretty much no one objects to, and a much larger, fur-driven hunt on
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GMOs on their way out, high-tech-assisted conventional breeding is in
Mother Nature's little helpers vs. Wannabe Gods: This story weaves an interesting story around a thread we've seen elsewhere, that companies like Monsanto and Syngenta are shifting away from transgenic seeds (those in which genes from one species of organism are inserted into another) and into using
Special Digest, rumor version: Mike Taylor to Join FDA
Another round for the revolving door: Rumor has it that Mike Taylor, currently a professor at George Washington University but better known for his work as Monsanto’s Vice President for Public Policy, will start on Monday
All work = delicious play
There is a reason the word eat is in sweat. Coming off of a weekend of non-stop planting, weeding, irrigating, harvesting, and storing,
The lost art of butchery moves to YouTube
Cowpooling director: Very nice piece by friend o'Ethicurean Tamar Adler on meeting a Le Grand, CA, butcher who processes mostly beef and lamb for the people who raised them or their customers. Thankfully, Bill McCann has begun to preserve his dying skills on digital video for the Inertent age. (Civil
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Leaving the city to live the dream of goats
Not kidding around: Writer Brad Kessler talks about his and his wife's decision to leave New York City for Vermont, raise goats, and make cheese, chronicled in his memoir "Goat
NAIS-ness in a nutshell
Tags are bagged, for now: The New York Times has a nice, colorful overview of the USDA's proposed National Animal Identification System (NAIS), explaining the government's rationale for modernizing
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Modern therapy for the LOHAS set
Will Peak Soil counseling be next? Clinical psychologist Kathy McMahon has branched out from the usual counseling topics to writing an advice column called Peak Oil Blues about the coming oil shortages. People write in with their worries, brag about how prepared
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Meaty diet found to be heavier in flame retardant PBDEs
Free to be me and PBDE: Humans and many animals have become cocktails of chemicals, with a lifetime's "body burden" acquired from skin contact, breathing, drinking, and eating industrial materials. A newly released paper by researchers at Boston University investigates the role of diet in the body burden
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The price of cheap meat: Antibiotic resistance
The good, the bad, and the buggy: A useful primer on antibiotic resistance, with two pages of illustrations, explains how bacteria develop resistance and pays special attention to the spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) from hospitals into the community, development of resistance
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Grow for it: A message about food from the president
In 1945, during the fourth year of America's direct involvement in World War II, President Harry Truman issued a proclamation about food. He called for those on the home front to plant larger victory gardens, to preserve more food,
Court blocks Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa
But what about Buckwheat, you rascals?: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld an injunction barring Monsanto from selling its Roundup Ready alfalfa seed until the government completes an environmental impact study on how the genetically modified product could affect neighboring crops. "This is
Time to get tray serious: Get involved with a Child Nutrition Act campaign now
School’s out for the summer, but there’s a food fight going on in the cafeteria. In Washington, Congress is turning up the heat on the policies that determine what 30 million children will eat once the lunch
New documentary “Food Stamped” explores whether you can eat healthy on food stamps
1 in 10 Americans trying to live on $1 per meal: A new documentary called "Food Stamped" follows a couple (a nutrition educator in low-income neighborhoods and her filmmaker husband) as they attempt to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet on a food stamp budget
San Francisco enacts first mandatory composting law in U.S.
San Francisco to rest of U.S.: Step up!: San Francisco's incredibly progressive mayor, Gavin Newsom, has just signed what he calls "the most comprehensive recycling and composting legislation in the country and the first to require residents and businesses to compost food scraps." San Francisco is already
