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South Dakota ponders potantial conflict of interest for university presidents
For sale: One ivory tower. Foundation needs replacing: A South Dakota state senator is pondering drafting legislation that would stop or limit university presidents in South Dakota from serving as highly paid board members for business corporations, like say, South Dakota State University President David Chicoine, who was appointed to Monsanto's board
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“Biopesticides” are hot stuff
Sounds good — what's the catch?: Scientists are working on natural compounds and organisms called biopesticides that control agricultural pests and don’t have adverse health effects on people. Researchers at Michigan State University recently identified two new genes and two new enzymes in tomato
Farmed fish have low levels of PCBs and other toxins
One win for aquaculture…some, anyway: Scientists from the Netherlands measured concentrations of several halogenated toxins in tilapia, pangasius, shrimp, salmon, trout, and shrimp that were farmed in several places around the world. Such toxins included Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), organochlorine
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“The Failure of Science”: New paper makes a damning case against genetically modified food crops
"Doom and gloomers." That's what my father used to call people who talked about global warming not as a chance to work on their tans, but as something that ought to be keeping humankind up at night. He'd
More education leads to better, costlier diet, study finds
Educated people pay more: A new study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association confirms that people with better diets pay more per calorie than people with bad diets. More important, the study found that more education was a stronger indicator than income for eating a better diet.
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Cow genome mapped
Cud you believe it?: Last week's news, but we missed it this article goes more in depth than our previous links, so…scientists have mapped the genome of the cow, and they can see "signatures of the human hand" in its development. Sheep
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Transgenic seeds are toast(ed): New report says GE crops have not increased yield
Couched deep within the earth-mother rhetoric of a recent Monsanto ad (which you can also see on the back cover of the current
While we were sleeping: Score one for the GMO lobby
Updated at 3:10 pacific to include the full language of the relevant section of the bill. Thanks, IM. Things have been busy around here lately, but that's no excuse. We've just been reminded that, like time, Monsanto stops for no man. Yesterday, eliciting not a ripple from the blogosphere, the Senate
Digest – News: Anti-biotics, working for the (corporate) man, and the price of obesity
More squealing from the porkers: The National Pork Producers Council objects to federal legislation introduced Tuesday by Rep. Louise Slaughter (no pun intended, really), the only microbiologist in the U.S. Congress, that would restrict the use of medically-important antibiotics in livestock production.
Digest – News: The California conundrum, Monsanto at large, and tuna testing (not to be tried at home)
A new growth export market - the revolving door: U.S. government agencies are imploring foreign countries to bring their food safety regulations up to the (arguably pretty low) U.S. par, but the buck doesn't stop there: countries like India are being pushed to develop regulations on GM crops, industrial
Digest – News: Salmon synergy, Whole Foods less whole, rotation’s right
Slammed by synergism: Researchers expose juvenile coho salmon to combinations of commonly-used agricultral pesticides. For two-thirds of the pesticide combinations, they find that the effect of the combination is greater than the sum of the impacts of the individual pesticides (i.e. the combo has synergistic
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Digest – Features and blogs: No flies on me, tomato realities, Osterholm revolves
The 'fix' is in: Sources say that the Obama Administration will nominate Michael Osterholm to head the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service on Monday, in clear violation of its own anti-revolving-door policy. Osterholm is a longtime supporter of food irradiation, but that's not all - if you have any
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Down (and out) on the farm: When even the good years don’t look so good
In late 2006, I was driving by corn fields in eastern Iowa when Tom Ashbrook's NPR show "On Point" came on the radio. The topic was ethanol. Among the commentators was an ag economist from Iowa State -- which seems to produce ag economists at a rate close to that at which Iowa produces corn -- who
Digest – Blogs, etc.: Frogs in the coal mine, what the government’s not telling us
Don't ask, don't tell: Tom Philpott wonders why, after two studies released last month showed detectable levels of mercury in products containing high fructose corn syrup, the FDA by its own admission has no plans to look into the issue. How nice that the agency would rather trust the claims of an industry
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Digest: Vilsack’s tightrope, the urban bounty, and a new era for “micro-farms”
Music to our ears: USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, who some in the good-food movement have blasted for his ties to agribusiness, sounds a sweet note by calling for a "new day" for the agency in which it serves both farmers and the nation's 300 million eaters. Is it all talk, or will we see some action? (
