Section » Biofuels
Digest: Wild birds cleared, USDA censured, protection from transgenic corn
Bird-flu CSI: It's official — comparison between the UK and Hungarian strains of the avian-flu virus reveals the highest genetic match, much more so than the strains found in wild birds. Press release Dept. of About Time: A federal judge ruled yesterday that the USDA failed to adequately
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Digest: Farm Bill opinions, bird-flu immunity, antibiotics ban brewing
Farm Bill pressure: Those who wanted Americans to realize just how broadly the Farm Bill affects all those who eat or grow food may have done their job a bit too well — it seems everyone has an opinion on what the new bill ought to cover. The latest to weigh in: General policies: A Register editorial
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Digest: Packer ban, organic schism, organic cloning, “ethical” foie gras
Meat monopoly busters: A new "packer ban" bill introduced by Senators Charles Grassley and Tom Harkin seeks to prohibit the large meatpackers from buying and raising their own livestock, which leads to price gouging and shutting out small farmers and ranchers. This is really big news, as it would basically
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Digest: Smithfield does something nice for sows (!), tuna endangered, Bush pushing ethanol
Shocking good news: Smithfield Foods, the nation’s largest hog producer (aka The Death Star of Pork), is voluntarily phasing out the use of "farrowing crates," the too-tiny cages for nursing sows that animal-welfare activists have
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Digest: Why you should care about the Farm Bill, “good” vs. “bad” food, UglyRipe tomatoes, cornification counterattack
Farm Bill 101: Tom Philpott plans to analyze the political economy of farming and suggest a socially and environmentally sustainable farm policy. (Someone has to do it, and we're glad he's volunteered.) The 2007 Farm Bill will affect everybody who cares about what they eat, and/or about the environment,
Digest: Ethiopian compost conquest, company potluck, Governator gooses food safety
People and Planet: Somebody tell the Bill Gates Foundation to hold up on foisting a GMO- and fossil-fueled Green Revolution on Africa! A 10-year experimental project has shown that Ethiopian farms using organic compost are producing higher
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Digest: Clone clown, be COOL, say no to palm oil, bullish on Whole Foods
USA Today: "Cyberspeak" columnist Andrew Kantor says cloned-meat opponents are simply anti-science and dumb as a box of hair. (We're paraphrasing. Sorta.) He fails to address why labeling meat from clones —
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Digest: No fat for fuel, hamster germs, ARS soy, cattlemen on cloning
Gristmill: Just say no to CAFO diesel! Tom Philpott explains in brief why deriving biodiesel from chicken fat is a bad idea. ABC News: The wires are afire with a
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Digest: Fuel from fat, free-range foie gras, desert fish farms, Operation Save the Cows
BusinessWeek: Tyson, Smithfield, and other Big Meat producers are looking at turning animal fat into biodiesel. Somehow we don't think Daryl Hannah and Willie Nelson are going to want to run their vehicles on factory-farmed chicken
Digest: Eee-aye-oh-no, Austria gets off GMO-free, irradiation’s back, restaurant fined
United Nations: According to a draft report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Org., 190 of the more than 7,600 breeds in the FAO global database of farm animal genetic resources have become extinct since 1990, and 1,500 more are deemed at
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Digest: Piggy confessional, more on meatpacking raid, lettuce fingered, more natural
Slate.com: Sara Dickerson's delightful look at the popularity of what she has dubbed the piggy confessional, the porcine write o' passage in which "a dead pig — usually killed, butchered, or eaten by the author — provokes a meditation on the ethics
Digest: Philpott busts biofuels, factory farming lawsuit, better butters
Grist: In today's Victual Reality column, Tom Philpott delivers a blistering report on the state of the biofuel industry around the globe. Sugar-based ethanol is taking a devastating toll on India and Brazil, while corn-based ethanol
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Digest: Taco John’s turn, E. coli CSI, transgenes gone wild, biodiesel
Radio Iowa: Dozens of Iowans are sick in a new E. coli outbreak — but suspicion is falling on a Taco John's, not a Taco Bell. (And supposedly green onions are not implicated,
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Digest: Scowcroft screed, scallions scapegoated, tariff tiff, more
Green Money Journal: An excellent, must-read piece by Bob Scowcroft, executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation. The first half, which those who have read Fromartz's "Organic, Inc." can skim
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Digest: Pollan on the FDA, Taco Bell update, updates from Britain
Salon.com*: Q&A with Michael Pollan about the recent revolting-food news, including why he trusts the FDA more than the USDA and why we must "figure out a way to [match] the regulation to the production system" as well as
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